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AGRICULTURE   AFTER    THE   WAR 


OTHER   WORKS    BY 
A.    D.    HALL,    F.R.S 


THE  SOIL. 

An  Introduction  to  the  Scientific  Study 
of  the  Growth  of  Crops.      5s.net. 

FERTILIZERS  AND  MANURES. 

5  s.  net. 

THE     FEEDING    OF     CROPS    AND 
STOCK. 

An  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  the 
Nutrition  of  Plants  and  Animals.  With 
Illustrations  and  Diagrams.      5s.  net. 

A      PILGRIMAGE       OF       BRITISH 
FARMING,  1910-12.     5s.net. 

THE    BOOK    OF    THE    ROTHAM- 
STED    EXPERIMENTS. 

Issued  with  the  Authority  of  the  Lawes 
Agricultural  Trust  Committee.  With 
Illustrations.      los.  6d.  net. 


AGRICULTURE   AFTER 
THE   WAR 

By  a.  D.  hall,  F.R.S. 


NEW  YORK : 

E.  P.  DUTTON  AND  COMPANY. 

1916 


^'^ 


^e^^7 


\^i^ 


PREFACE 

It  is  not  desirable  that  a  servant  of  the  State  should 
publish  his  opinions  on  matters  which  are,  or  may  be  in 
the  immediate  future,  the  subject  of  political  debate 
or  legislative  action.  My  excuse  for  what  may  be 
regarded  as  departing  in  some  particulars  from  this 
wise  rule  is  that  the  views  here  set  out  have,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  already  been  printed  as  evidence 
before  one  or  other  of  the  Departmental  Committees 
appointed  by  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture 
and  presided  over  by  Lord  Milner,  Sir  Harry  Verney, 
and  Mr.  Henry  Hobhouse.  But  as  that  evidence  was 
necessarily  given  piecemeal  and  did  not  cover  the  whole 
ground,  I  have  felt  that  I  might  be  allowed  to  set  out, 
in  as  coherent  a  form  as  I  could  give  it,  the  whole  case 
for  the  reorganization  of  agriculture  in  order  to  meet 
national  needs  and  the  situation  created  by  the  war. 

The  argument  here  presented  may  be  imperfect,  and 
the  concrete  proposals  may  be  dismissed  as  impractical 
or  replaced  by  others  more  expedient,  but  of  the  need 
for  the  adoption  by  the  State  of  a  considered  agricul- 
tural policy  for  the  better  utilization  of  the  land  of  the 
country  I  have  no  shadow  of  doubt.  All  that  I  hope 
to  do  is  to  provide  materials  for  the  due  consideration 
of  such  a  policy,  and  the  best  I  can  urge  on  behalf  of 
my  own  opinions  is  that  I  have  endeavoured  to  be  fair 
and  to  give  due  weight  to  all  the  evidence  available 
without  special  pleading  with  regard  to  any  party  or 
interest. 

My  text  is  the  need  for  an  increased  production  of 
food  at  home  and  the  greater  employment  of  men  upon 

357950 


vi  PREFACE 

the  land  as  essential  to  the  security  of  the  Nation  as  a 
whole,  and  independent  of  the  particular  interests  of 
either  landowners  or  fanners. 

Some  of  my  friends  will  consider  that  I  have  been 
unjust  to  the  farmers  of  the  country,  and  will  refuse  to 
accept  my  assurance  that  they  are  among  the  minority 
whose  standard  of  work  I  desire  to  see  universal.  But 
I  am  not  out  to  award  either  praise  or  blame  ;  I  want 
to  arrive  at  the  facts  and  ensure  their  examination 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  national  needs.  A  man 
may  be  a  first-rate  farmer  as  regards  his  own  personal 
success  and  yet  be  pursuing  a  policy  inimical  to  the 
ultimate  welfare  of  the  State.  Before  one  attaches 
any  blame  to  the  current  race  of  farmers  one  must 
consider  the  extraordinary  crisis  through  which  they 
have  passed  in  the  last  thirty  years  without  any 
attention  or  assistance  from  the  State,  then  one  will  be 
more  inclined  to  praise  them  for  having  contrived  to 
remain  in  existence  at  all. 

I  have  to  thank  many  friends  for  assistance  in  the 
preparation  of  these  pages,  either  in  the  shape  of  infor- 
mation or  of  criticism.  In  particular  I  would  wish  to 
mention  my  colleague,  Mr.  Vaughan  Nash,  C.B., 
C.V.O.,  Professor  W.  G.  S.  Adams  and  Mr.  C.  S. 
Orwin  of  Oxford,  Professor  T.  B.  Wood  and  Mr.  K.  J.  J. 
Mackenzie  of  Cambridge,  Mr.  C.  W.  Fielding,  Mr.  Harold 
Faber,  Danish  Commissioner,  and  Mr.  S.  Stagg  of  the 
Development  Commission,  who  has  given  me  great 
assistance  in  reviewing  the  statistical  figures  quoted. 

A.  D.  Hall. 


February,  1916. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 
OUR  DEPENDENCE  UPON  IMPORTED  FOOD       *        -      i 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  DECLINE  OF  BRITISH  AGRICULTURE        -        -     i8 

CHAPTER   III 
ARABLE  LAND  VERSUS  GRASS 29 

CHAPTER   IV 
POSSIBLE   DEVELOPMENTS 39 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  CAPACITY  OF  THE  LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION    85 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE    DEPENDENCE    OF    ARABLE    FARMING    UPON 
PRICES 104 

CHAPTER  VII 
WHAT  ACTION   IS  PRACTICABLE 118 

CHAPTER  VIII 
SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSION 127 

APPENDICES 

I.     AGRICULTURAL  IMPORTS  AND  EXPORTS,  191 3  -  132 

II.     ACREAGE  AND  LIVE  STOCK  RETURNS,  1870-1915  134 

III.  AGRICULTURAL     POPULATION     OF     ENGLAND 

AND  WALES,   1871-1911 136 

IV.  CONSUMPTION  OF  FERTILIZERS  IN  THE  U.K.,  1913  ^37 

vii 


Agriculture  after  the  War 

CHAPTER  I 

OUR  DEPENDENCE  UPON  IMPORTED  FOOD 

While  it  is  generally  recognized  that  the  United 
Kingdom  occupies  a  unique  position  among  nations  in 
its  dependence  upon  foreign  countries  for  a  large  pro- 
portion of  its  food  supplies,  some  of  the  consequences 
of  that  dependence  are  only  just  being  brought  home  to 
us  by  the  course  of  the  present  European  war.  The 
possibility  of  starvation  or  of  such  grave  interruption 
to  the  ordinary  course  of  our  trade  as  to  enforce  our 
submission  to  our  enemies  has  for  the  present  been 
averted ;  but  enough  has  been  seen  of  the  unantici- 
pated developments  of  modern  warfare  and  of  the 
financial  situation  that  it  creates,  to  call  for  a  review 
of  our  national  poKcy  with  regard  to  food  supply 
and  the  consideration  of  our  agricultural  position 
from  a  standpoint  that  has  hitherto  been  neglected. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  British  people 
never  really  believed  that  they  would  be  involved 
in  a  war  of  the  present  magnitude.  Opinions  may 
differ  as  to  the  adequacy  or  the  wisdom  of  our  naval 
and  military  preparations  ;  but  all  would  agree  that  no 
attempt  had  been  made  to  foresee  or  to  provide  against 


2'  :  ;  THE  RISK  OF  BLOCKADE 

the  effect  of  war  on  the  general  Hfe  of  the  people  and  on 
the  industrial  and  commercial  situation  upon  which 
the  existence  of  the  nation  ultimately  depends.  The 
strength  that  Germany  has  shown,  her  capacity  to 
maintain  the  offensive  even  when  cut  off  from  the  mass 
of  her  foreign  trade,  have  not  been  wholly  due  to  her 
natural  resources,  but  have,  in  the  main,  been  brought 
about  by  deliberate  prevision  of  the  conditions  that 
war  would  create  and  by  the  preparation  of  the  whole 
fabric  of  the  community  for  the  shock,  in  which  pre- 
paredness the  position  of  agriculture  and  the  question 
of  food  supplies  have  been  matters  of  prime  importance. 
So  it  must  become  for  us  ;  whether  we  like  it  or  not  the 
possibilities  of  war  have  definitely  re-entered  our  scheme 
of  existence,  and  the  consequences  of  war  will  depend 
upon  the  clearness  and  forethought  with  which  we  pre- 
pare for  it  in  our  social  organization.  The  question  of 
our  dependence  upon  foreign  supplies  is  not  solely  a 
matter  of  whether  we  can  get  the  food  necessary  to 
maintain  our  population,  though  submarine  warfare 
has  developed  so  rapidly  that  we  must  be  prepared  for 
a  much  more  effective  blockade  of  the  British  Islands 
that  will  only  allow  a  few  food  ships  to  slip  through. 
Even  the  course  of  the  present  war  has  shown  us 
how  narrow  the  margin  of  safety  may  become ;  in 
May,  1915,  the  price  of  English  wheat  rose  to  68s. 
per  quarter  ;  in  February,  1916,  it  is  already  as  high  as 
63s.,  very  largely  because  of  the  wholesale  withdrawal 
of  freight  for  war  purposes.  A  little  further  destruc- 
tion of  shipping  or  increase  of  danger  to  cargoes  afloat 
and  the  price  might  rise  to  a  level  that  would  so 
disturb  the  internal  economy  of  the  nation  as  to 
hamper  it  grievously  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war. 


.>^ 


MAGNITUDE  OF  IMPORTS  3 

Moreover,  the  prime  business  of  the  Navy  is  to  fight, 
and  the  intensification  of  the  attack  upon  our  commerce 
that  we  may  reasonably  anticipate  in  any  future  war, 
would  necessitate  such  a  withdrawal  of  our  ships  in 
order  to  guard  the  trade  routes  as  would  dangerously 
weaken  the  offensive  powers  of  the  Navy.  Thus  the 
great  dependence  of  the  country  upon  foreign  food 
supplies  renders  us  liable  to  internal  disturbances 
created  by  high  prices  even  when  starvation  is  out  of 
the  question  ;  it  adds  to  naval  expenditure  because  of 
the  prime  necessity  of  securing  the  entry  of  shipping, 
and  therefore  embarrasses  and  weakens  the  action  of 
the  Navy  at  a  time  when  its  whole  strength  ought  to  be 
free  to  concentrate  against  the  enemy. 

Weighty  as  are  these  considerations,  even  more 
serious  is  the  financial  instability  that  is  created  in  war 
time  by  our  absolute  dependence  upon  a  large  volume 
of  imports.  The  nation's  position  as  regards  imports 
,  may  be  summarized  as  follows  : 

TABLE  I. 


T,  ,  1  T  ,       From  British 

Total  Imports.      _ 

^  Possessions. 


Food,  drink,  and  tobacco 

£290  millions 

£76  millions 

Raw  materials     . . 

282        „ 

92 

Manufactured  articles     . .  i     194        „ 

23 

{Statistical  Abstract  for  1913) 


4  IMPORTS  OF  FOOD 

Taking  the  "  food,  drink  and  tobacco  "  imports  in 
detail,  and  excluding  the  materials  that  are  not  pro- 
duced in  the  United  Kingdom — maize,  oranges,  bana- 
nas, sugar,  tea,  wine,  etc. — we  import  of  food  materials  : 

Wheat  and  other  grains       . .         . .  £68  millions 

Meat    . .         . .         . .         . .         . .     57 

Butter,  fruit,  lard,  eggs,  fish,  etc.    . .     71        ,, 


196 


to  which  might  be  added  £14  millions  for  maize  that 
we  may  regard  as  replaceable  by  cattle  food  grown  in 
this  country,  and  a  further  £44  millions  for  wool  and 
hides,  which  are  equally  agricultural  products  natural 
to  our  soil.  Our  imports  of  agricultural  materials 
which  are  also  in  part  produced  in  this  country  thus 
amount  to  £242  milUons  (less  £46  millions  for  re- 
exports), of  which  British  Possessions  send  only  £91 
millions. 

Considering  food  proper  the  imports,  less  the  re- 
exports, amount  to  about  £229  millions  per  annum,  of 
which  only  £62  millions  are  drawn  from  British  Posses- 
sions, leaving  an  annual  adverse  balance  against  the 
Empire  of  £167  millions.  This  is  a  bill  for  material  that 
is  consumed  in  the  country  and  does  not  go  out  again  in 
a  manufactured  form,  as  do  imports  of  other  raw  mate- 
rials ;  more  particularly  in  this  connection  it  is  a  bill  for 
materials  we  cannot  dispense  with  in  war  time.  Under 
peace  conditions  we  pay  for  our  imports  of  food  and  raw 
materials  by  our  exports,  i.e.,  by  the  labour  put  into  the 
conversion  of  raw  materials  into  finished  goods,  e.g., 
cotton  goods  and  machinery,  or  by  raw  materials  of  our 


DEPRECIATION  OF  CREDIT  BY  IMPORTS    5 

own,  e.g.,  coal,  or  by  our  foreign  investments.  A  Euro- 
pean war  like  the  present  considerably  reduces  our 
manufacturing  for  export,*  but  though  we  can  cut  off 
automatically  the  imports  required  f 01  that  purpose  we 
cannot  cut  off  the  food  nor  the  increasing  volume  of 
materials  that  are  wanted  for  war  purposes.  In  war, 
the  balance  of  trade  must  go  against  the  nation  :  ex- 
ports cease  to  pay  for  imports,  which  have  to  be  bought 
upon  credit,  and  that  credit  becomes  the  more  strained 
the  bigger  the  import  bill.  In  the  case  of  the  United 
Kingdom  we  have  to  continue  depreciating  the  imperial 
credit  by  buying  from  outside  the  Empire  167  million 
pounds  worth  of  food,  the  whole  or  any  part  of  which, 
if  produced  at  home,  would  not  lower  the  national 
credit  at  all  during  the  war,  because  it  would  be  paid 
for  in  paper  at  home  where  the  credit  of  that  paper  is 
unassailable.  It  may  be  more  profitable  in  peace  time 
to  buy  food  and  pay  in  manufactures,  but  when  war 
comes  and  we  can  neither  make  nor  sell  the  finished 
articles  though  the  food  bill  has  still  to  be  incurred, 
then  so  large  an  annual  debit  as  £167  millions  becomes 


*  The  falling  off  in  exports  during  war  may  be  estimated  from  the 
following  figures.  {Accounts  relating  to  Trade  and  Navigation,  Dec, 
1915-) 


Exports. 

1913. 

1915- 

Coal  and  coke 
Iron  and  steel 
Machinery.. 
Cotton  goods 
Woollen  goods 

£  (millions.) 

53.7 

54-3 

37-0 

127.2 

37-7 

£  (millions.) 
38.8 
40.4 
19.2 
85.9 
32.9 

Total  exports    . . 

5250 

385.0 

6   INCREASED  COST  OF  IMPORTS  DURING  WAR 

a  serious  item  in  depreciating  the  Empire's  credit.  The 
consumer  also  is  doubly  hit  in  the  price  he  has  to  pay 
at  home ;  he  pays  more  because  of  the  fall  in  the 
Exchange ;  he  pays  far  more  because  of  the  freight 
difficulty  a  general  war  creates,  and  of  the  magnitude 
of  that  difficulty  we  had  no  conception  before  this  war 
began.  The  following  comparison  (Table  II)  of  the 
quantities  and  values  of  the  more  important  articles  of 
food,  for  the  years  1913  and  1915,  shows  the  enormous 
extra  cost  of  food  in  war  time  : 


TABLE  11. — QUANTITIES  AND  VALUE  OF  CERTAIN  IMPORTS 
OF  FOOD,  I913  AND  I915 

(Accounts  relating  to  Trade  and  Navigation,  Dec,  1915) 


Quantities  in 
million  cwts. 

Values  in  £ 
millions. 

1913- 

1915. 

1913- 

1915. 

Wheat  and  flour    . . 

Oats 

Maize 

117.9 
18.2 
49.2 

99.2 
15.6 

48.6 

50.2 

5-7 
13.8 

65.6 

8.5 
18.9 

Total  grains  and  flour 
of  all  kinds 

225.3 

201.3 

85.5 

112.4 

Meat 

Butter 

Cheese 

23.3 
4-1 
2.3 

25.3 

3.9 
2.7 

55.3 

24.1 

7.0 

86.3 
27.0 
II. I 

Total  of  foods  enum- 
erated above 

255-0 

233-2 

171.9 

236.8 

MAGNITUDE  OF  HOME  PRODUCTION       7 

Thus  of  the  main  articles  of  food  selected  for  com- 
parison (the  value  of  which  was  £172  milhons  in  1913 
out  of  a  total  of  £255  millions)  the  quantity  imported 
fell  in  1915,  the  war  year,  by  22  million  cwts.  or  9  per 
cent. ;  but  the  cost  to  the  country  rose  by  £65  millions, 
or  38  per  cent .  Various  articles  have  been  omitted  from 
this  comparison  because  of  the  difficulty  of  bringing  the 
quantities  into  line — e.g.,  eggs — or  because  the  imports 
could  not  be  replaced  at  home — e.g.,  sugar — but  if  we 
consider  values  alone  the  £290  millions  paid  for  food, 
drink  and  tobacco  in  1913  became  £382  millions  in 
1915,  an  increase  of  32  per  cent,  in  cost  for  a  smaller 
quantity  of  goods.  A  greater  home  production  of 
food  would  relieve  both  the  foreign  Exchange  and  the 
freight  market,  which  as  we  have  learnt  to  our  cost 
becomes  in  war  time  preoccupied  with  the  movement 
and  supply  of  troops  and  the  carriage  of  materials 
indispensable  for  munitions. 

The  burden  of  the  food  bill  and  the  extent  of  our 
dependence  upon  foreign  supplies  falls  into  better 
perspective  if  we  consider  it  in  connection  with  the 
domestic  production.  Estimates  of  the  amount  of  food 
grown  in  the  United  Kingdom  can  only  be  very  approxi- 
mate ;  the  best  data  available  are  those  contained  in 
the  Census  of  Production  for  1908  (see  The  Agricultural 
Output  of  Great  Britain  and  The  J{gricultural  Output 
of  Ireland,  19 12),  which  m^ay,  without  much  error,  be 
set  alongside  imports  for  1913  because  no  change  has 
intervened  to  vitiate  the  general  comparison.  The 
following  table,  No.  Ill,  gives  for  the  main  articles  of 
human  food  a  comparison  of  the  imports  from  foreign 
countries  and  British  Possessions  with  the  estimated 
production  for  sale  in  the  British  Islands. 


8 


COMPARISON  OF  IMPORTS 


TABLE  III. COMPARISON  OF  IMPORTS  FROM  FOREIGN  COUNTRIES  AND 

BRITISH  POSSESSIONS  WITH  PRODUCTION  IN  THE  UNITED  KING- 
DOM. VALUES  IN  MILLION  I.  IMPORTS  FROM  v^^iVZ/^L  STATEMENT 
(CD.  7968)  :  UNITED  KINGDOM  PRODUCTION  FROM  AGRICULTURAL 
OUTPUT  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  IRELAND  FOR  I908  : 


,. 

a   ... 

- 

rts  fro 
reign 
ntries 
913. 

rts  fro 
itish 
=.ssion 
913. 

lited 
gdom 
uction 
908. 

Percentages  of  Total. 

0  0  3-^ 

0  j^  tn""" 

►q  CT)-< 

r^ 

"2| 

Wheat 

22.6 

21.3 

10.6 

Wheat  flour 

3-9 

2.4 

43-6 

39-0 

17.4 

Barley 

5-9 

2.2 

10.2 

32.2 

12.0 

^s.s 

Oats         

4.9 

0.8 

}i8.i 

Oatmeal  . . 

0.3 

03 

21.3 

4-5 

74.2 

Peas         

0.5 

0.5 

I.I 

23-8 

23.8 

52.4 

Beans 

0.7 

O.I 

1-7 

28.0 

4.0 

68.0 

Potatoes 

2.0 

0.6 

16.0 

10.8 

3-2 

86.0 

Vegetables 

2.8 

0.6 

1-7 

54-9 

11.8 

33-3 

Fruit  of  kinds  grown  in 

the  United  Kingdom . . 

3.4 

1-3 

4.8 

35.8 

13-7 

50.5 

47.0 

30.1 

64.2 

33-3 

21.3 

45.4 

Meat        

Lard        

41.6 

5.8 

14.0 
0.2 

•82.0 

33.0 

9.8 

57.2 

Butter 

19.5 

4.6 

\ 

Cheese 

1.3 

5.7 

[40-5 

31.3 

13-9 

54-8 

Milk         

2.3 

0.03 

Poultry  and  eggs 

10.3 

0.4 

10.3 

49.0 

2.0 

49.0 

80.8 

24.9 

132.8 

33-9 

10.4 

55.7 

Sugar       

23-.5 

i.o 

Maize  and  maize  meal  . . 

13-8 

0.2 

Rice  and  rice  meal 

1-3 

1-9 

Other  grains  and  meals . . 

1.4 

0.6 

Fruit  and  nuts  not  grown 

in  the  United  Kingdom 

10.8 

0.4 

Foods  not  enumerated . . 

13-9 

3.1 

64.7 

7.2 

Totals            .. 

192.5 

62.2 

197.0 

42.6 

13.8 

43.6 

■ 

It  has  been  necessary  to  express  the  comparison  in  values,  as  the 
relative  quantities  are  not  always  available — e.g.,  though  the  weight 
of  imports  of  meat  is  known  the  home  production  has  to  be  estimated 
in  numbers  of  animals.    The  consideration  of  values  leads  to  certain 


RATIO  OF  IMPORTS  TO  HOME  PRODUCTION     9 

Of  wheat  and  wheat  flour  the  home  production 
amounts  to  a  Httle  more  than  one-sixth  of  the  total 
consumption  if  we  consider  values,  one-fifth  when 
quantities  are  compared.  Thirty-sev^  per  cent,  of 
the  whole  consumption  and  nearly  one-half  of  the 
total  imports  come  from  British  Possessions — India, 
Canada,  Australia. 

Of  the  other  corn  grown  in  this  country — ^barley, 
oats,  peas  and  beans — the  importations  are  less  than 
one-half  of  the  home  production  and  they  are  chiefly 
from  foreign  countries.  Of  potatoes  the  importa- 
tions amount  to  about  £2  J  million  yearly,  the  bulk 
coming  from  foreign  countries  ;  but  this  is  only  a  small 
fraction  in  value  and  a  still  smaller  fraction  in  quantity 
of  the  domestic  consumption,  which  is  much  larger  than 
the  figure  set  down  because  that  takes  account  only  of 
the  potatoes  grown  for  sale  on  the  field  scale  and  not  of 
the  produce  of  the  small  holaings,  allotments  and  pri- 
vate gardens.  The  same  qualification  has  to  be  applied 
to  the  consideration  of  the  output  of  vegetables ;  the 
importations  to  the  value  of  £3.4  miUions  amount  to 
double  the  estimated  home  production,  but  the  latter 
figure  only  represents  the  sales  of  such  market  gardeners 
as  are  working  on  a  large  enough  scale  to  be  able  to 
make  returns  to  the  Board  of  Agriculture  of  the  acre- 
age they  have  under  the  various  crops.  What  the 
actual  output  for  consumption  is  would  be  diflicult  to 
estimate ;  but  for  the  present  purpose  it  is  evident 
that  there  is  a  comparatively  considerable  importation, 

elements  of  error — e.g.,  in  dealing  with  potatoes  the  value  of  the  im- 
ports is  disproportionate  to  the  quantity  because  a  large  proportion 
consists  of  early  potatoes  commanding  a  special  price.  But  allowing 
for  these  imperfections  in  the  comparison,  the  main  purport  of  the 
table  is  clear  enough. 


10  THE  IMPORTS  OF  MEAT 

£2.8  millions  from  foreign  sources,  which  might  in  part 
be  replaced  by  home-grown  produce.  To  sum  up  the 
part  of  the  table  that  is  concerned  with  food  materials  of 
vegetable  origin«which  are  produced  also  in  the  United 
Kingdom,  the  importations  amount  to  £77  millions 
against  a  home  production  (admittedly  under-estimated) 
of  £64  millions,  and  of  the  importations  less  than  half 
(;f30  milHons)  come  from  countries  within  the  Empire. 

With  regard  to  animal  products,  the  importations  of 
meat  and  lard  amount  to  over  £60  millions  annually 
(;£i4  milUons,  or  23  per  cent.,  from  British  Possessions), 
against  which  we  have  to  set  an  estimated  home  pro- 
duction of  £82  millions.  This  latter  estimate  is  subject 
to  two  errors  :  in  the  first  place  it  represents  the  value 
of  animals  on  the  hoof  as  sold  by  the  farmer,  whereas 
the  imports  are  dressed  carcasses  ready  for  sale,  i.e., 
meat  alone.  However,  we  may  take,  as  a  rough  rule, 
that  the  value  for  sale  of  the  meat  in  an  animal  is  about 
equal  to  seven-eighths  of  the  price  received  by  the 
farmer.  But  if  the  value  of  the  home-grown  meat  is 
thus  reduced  to  less  than  £74  millions,  something  should 
be  added  to  the  home  production  for  hides  ana  skins, 
tallow,  etc. 

On  the  other  hand,  though  the  farmer's  output  is 
estimated  at  the  value  of  £82  millions,  this  is  too  high 
a  figure  for  the  value  of  the  meat  that  reaches  the  con- 
sumer, because  the  Irish  output  has  been  reckoned  like 
the  British,  as  animals  ready  for  slaughter.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  Irish  trade  is  in  animals  in  store 
condition,  that  are  bought  by  British  farmers  to  be 
finished,  and  so  become  reckoned  t\^dce  over  in  the 
British  as  well  as  in  the  Irish  production.  It  has  been 
estimated  that  a  deduction  of  about  £y  millions  ought 


DAIRY  PRODUCE  ii 

to  be  made  on  this  account,  bringing  the  value  of  the 
home  production  down  to  £67  milUons.  Again,  if 
we  wish  to  compare  quantities,  we  must  make  allowance 
for  the  fact  that  home-grown  meat  is  sold  at  a  higher 
price  than  foreign ;  a  deduction  of  one-seventh  can  be 
made  on  this  account.  However,  the  general  conclusion 
remains  that  we  produce  at  home  considerably  more 
than  half  of  our  normal  consumption  of  meat,  and  of 
the  total  imports  rather  less  than  one-quarter  comes 
from  British  Possessions.  Thus  the  situation  as  regards 
meat  is  safe  enough.  Three-quarters  of  our  supplies 
originate  within  the  Empire,  and  in  a  time  of  real  stress 
the  consumption  could  be  diminished  in  this  ratio  with- 
out harm  to  the  community,  while  the  breeding  stocks, 
equal  to  at  least  a  year  and  a  half's  normal  consump- 
tion, form  an  ultimate  reserve  in  case  of  an  absolute 
blockade. 

The  figure  given  for  dairy  produce  originating  in 
the  United  Kingdom  is  for  various  reasons  a  very 
doubtful  one.  In  the  first  place  the  estimate  of  the 
amount  of  milk  produced  has  to  be  founded  only  upon 
the  recorded  number  of  milch  cows,  and  the  value  to  be 
attached  to  that  milk  can  only  be  roughly  guessed  at, 
for  that  which  is  sold  as  milk  by  the  British  farmer 
obtains  nearly  double  the  price  of  that  which  the  Irish 
farmer  has  to  sell  in  the  form  of  butter.  The  whole 
fresh  milk  consumption  is  supplied  by  the  home  pro- 
ducer ;  but  approximately  the  cost  of  the  imports  of 
dairy  produce  (one-third  of  which  come  from  British 
Possessions)  amounts  to  about  40  per  cent,  of  the  total 
expenditure  of  the  nation  on  milk,  cheese  and  butter, 
though  the  nutritive  value  of  the  imports  would  be  more 
nearly  equal  to  that  of  the  home  produce.    Eggs  and 


12     IMPORTS   AND   HOME   PRODUCTION 

poultry  are  imported  to  the  value  of  £10.7  millions,  of 
which  only  a  very  small  fraction  comes  from  British 
Possessions.  The  value  of  the  home  production  is  esti- 
mated at  £10.3  millions,  a  figure  which  again  takes  no 
account  of  the  large  amounts  which  are  consumed  by 
private  producers  and  are  never  sold.  On  the  whole,  we 
may  estimate  that  at  least  one-half  of  the  total  con- 
sumption is  grown  within  the  United  Kingdom. 

In  addition  we  consume  about  £40  millions  worth  of 
food — sugar,  rice,  nuts  and  fruit — that  is  not  produced 
at  all  in  the  United  Kingdom,  and  only  about  £3 
millions  of  this  comes  from  British  Possessions. 


TABLE   IV.—COMPARISON    OF   IMPORTS    AND 
PRODUCTION    (19IO-I4) 

HOME 

— 

United 
Kingdom. 

British 

Empire 

Overseas. 

Foreign 
Countries. 

Wheat 

Meat 

Poultry 

Eggs 

Butter  (including  mar- 
garine) 
Cheese 
Milk  (including  cream) 

Fruit 

Vegetables 

Per  cent. 
19.0 

57.9 
82.7 
67.6 

25-1 

19-5 
954 
36.3 
91.8 

Per  cent. 

39-3 
10.7 

0.2 

0.1 

133 

654 

0.0 

8-3 
I.I 

Per  cent. 
417 
314 
17.1 

32.3 

61.6 

151 
4.6 

554 
7.1 

Mr.    Rew's   estimates  for  the   five  years   1910-14 
{Journal  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture,  XXII,  I9i5>  P-  5^4)' 


DEPENDENCE  UPON  IMPORTED  FOOD  13 

are  set  out  in  Table  IV.  It  is  not  stated  whether  the 
comparison  is  for  values  or  quantities,  but  the  results 
agree  substantially  with  the  single  year's  figures  already 
discussed. 

Summarizing,  of  these  major  articles  of  human  food 
we  have  a  home  production  to  the  value  of  about  £190 
millions  against  an  importation  to  the  value  of  £220 
millions,  £60  millions  of  which  come  from  British 
Possessions.  Of  meat,  dairy  produce,  potatoes,  etc., 
we  produce  one-half  or  more  of  our  consumption  ;  the 
really  weak  spot  is  the  fundamental  foodstuff — wheat, 
of  which  we  only  produce  at  home  one-fifth  of  our 
requirements. 

We  arrive,  then,  at  the  following  conclusions :  the 
British  Islands  are  importing  about  one-half  of  the 
total  food  they  consume  if  reckoned  in  values  but  con- 
siderably more  than  one-half  if  the  efficiency  of  the 
food  in  maintaining  life  and  work  is  considered.  The 
payments  for  this  food  and  other  agricultural  material 
producible  here  amount  to  over  £250  millions  per 
annum,  of  which  two-thirds  are  paid  to  foreign  countries 
not  within  the  British  Empire.  In  war  time  this  im- 
portation constitutes  a  source  of  weakness  to  the 
nation  in  three  directions  : 

1.  Through  the  absolute  danger  of  starvation,  or 

of  such  a  limitation  of  supplies  as  will  raise 
prices  to  the  point  of  creating  an  internal 
crisis. 

2.  By  the  withdrawal  of  our  naval  power  from  its 

offensive  function  to  that  of  guarding  the 
trade  routes. 


14     THE  COST  OF  NATIONAL  SECURITY 

3.  Through  the  reduction  of  the  national  credit  by 
the  necessity  of  paying  such  large  amounts, 
which  are  materially  increased  in  war  time,  to 
foreign  producers. 

In  our  national  policy  we  have  hitherto  tacitly 
accepted  these  dangers  ;  we  have  worked  upon  the 
assumption  that  it  is  better  for  the  British  Islands  to 
develop  as  an  industrial  and  trading  community,  ex- 
changing the  elaborated  products  of  our  manufacturing 
skill  for  the  more  primitive  articles  of  food  and  raw 
materials,  because  we  thus  turned  to  better  profit  the 
labour  of  our  dense  population.  We  have  trusted  to 
the  Navy  to  protect  the  transit  of  the  necessary  food, 
and  in  that  expectation  we  have  not  been  deceived  ; 
but  we  have  not  foreseen  that  the  physical  power 
to  continue  importations  is  only  one,  and  not  perhaps 
the  most  important,  part  of  the  problem  of  national 
security ;  the  further  financial  question  of  the  con- 
tinued ability  of  the  nation  to  pay  for  such  food 
during  a  long  war  has  only  now  been  brought  home 
to  us. 

We  are  thereby  forced  to  ask  ourselves  whether  a 
review  of  this  national  policy  has  not  become  necessary 
— a  review  that  will  take  war  and  its  revealed  conse- 
quences into  account  and  will  so  reshape  the  agricul- 
tural system  of  the  country  as  to  remove  or  reduce 
materially  the  dangers  that  arise  from  our  great  depend- 
ence upon  foreign  supplies  of  food.  If  it  is  possible  to 
produce  the  bulk  of  our  requirements  at  home  we  shall 
thereby  effect  a  further  insurance  of  the  safety  of  the 
nation — an  insurance  that  is  additional  to  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  Navy,  which  assists  the  Navy  in  its 


VALUE  OF  A  RURAL  POPULATION        15 

proper  task,  and  which  adds  to  the  financial  stabiHty 
of  the  nation  in  a  manner  the  Navy  cannot  do. 

It  is  no  final  answer  to  the  proposition  submitted  for 
consideration  to  say  that  experience  has  proved  that  it 
is  cheaper  for  a  nation  in  our  position  to  buy  its  food 
in  the  open  market  and  pay  for  it  with  manufactures. 
All  questions  of  cheapness  are  relative.  It  would  be 
cheaper  to  dispense  with  the  Navy  and  Army  if  we 
could  ensure  peace  ;  but  as  that  is  impossible  we  accept 
the  burden  of  maintaining  the  Services,  and  the  question 
we  have  to  consider  is  whether  an  enhanced  agricul- 
tural output,  such  as  can  be  attained  at  some  price  or 
other,  may  not  be  a  part  of  the  national  defence  so 
necessary  that  it  has  to  be  paid  for,  cheaply  or  other- 
wise. The  answer  turns  on  the  degree  of  necessity  and 
the  degree  of  cheapness,  for  we  have  learnt  that  the 
market  may  not  be  always  open  and  will  become  a 
very  dear  one  just  at  the  time  when  it  is  most  imperative 
to  confine  our  expenditure  within  our  own  dominions. 

Moreover,  there  is  a  social  side  to  the  question — that 
of  the  effect  of  their  occupation  upon  the  character  of  our 
people.  A  population  dependent  entirely  upon  manufac- 
tures gives  rise  to  an  unstable  State,  subject  to  compara- 
tively violent  fluctuations  of  employment  from  causes 
which  are  liable  to  affect  all  industries  simultaneously  ; 
an  agricultural  community  alongside  the  industrial  one 
serves  as  a  reservoir  for  labour,  absorbing  the  fluc- 
tuations because  its  own  variations  depend  upon 
different  factors,  and  so  equalizing  the  demand. 
Politically  a  country  population  is  the  more  sober  and 
cautious  because  it  is  in  touch  with  certain  fundamental 
aspects  of  existence  that  are  hidden  away  from  the 
purely  town  dwellers.    No  one  concerned  with  the  ulti- 


i6     UNEMPLOYMENT  AFTER  THE  WAR 

mate  welfare  of  our  nation  can  view  with  equanimity 
the  tendencies  of  the  last  half-century,  the  continuous 
depopulation  of  the  country  and  the  growth  of  the  towns. 
If  the  process  continued  our  State  would  become 
economically  parasitic  upon  the  more  primitive  food- 
producing  countries;  and  a  parasite,  however  highly 
organized,  cannot  continue  to  exist  if  the  connection 
with  its  host  is  severed. 

To  attempt  the  adjustment  of  the  future  occu- 
pations of  our  population  may  appear  too  remote 
an  enterprise  and  one  too  liable  to  disturbance  by 
unforeseen  factors  to  be  contemplated ;  but  there  is 
before  us  the  immediate  practical  question  of  the 
employment  of  our  returned  soldiers  at  the  close  of 
the  war.  We  must  be  prepared  for  a  great  industrial 
depression  following  the  war,  even  though  there  may 
be  a  temporary  demand  for  labour  for  reconstructive 
purposes.  Still,  the  enormous  destruction  that  has 
been  wrought  and  the  burden  of  taxation  that  will 
be  resting  on  all  European  countries  must  cause  all 
industries  to  languish,  especially  those  producing 
articles  which  are  not  universal  necessaries  of  life.  In 
consequence  many  of  the  men  returned  from  service 
will  find  no  places  open  in  the  industries  they  have  left, 
even  allowing  for  the  vacancies  created  by  deaths  and 
disablement,  and  this  shortage  of  employment  will  be 
intensified  by  the  considerable  replacement  of  men  by 
women  that  is  daily  going  on.  The  men  themselves 
will,  in  many  cases,  be  seeking  an  outdoor  life  ;  the 
routine  of  their  occupation  in  the  factory  or  the  oihce 
has  been  broken  ;  some  of  them  will  have  acquired  an 
antipathy  against  the  monotony  of  manufacturing  or 
commercial  wage  earning,  and  will  look  for  employment 


THE  LAND  AS  AN  OUTLET  17 

upon  the  land.  If  that  feeling  cannot  be  satisfied  at 
home  they  will  take  the  first  opportunity  of  emigration 
to  countries  where  land  is  obtainable,  urged  thereto, 
moreover,  by  the  pressure  of  taxation  that  will  then  be 
resting  upon  this  country.  Here,  indeed,  lies  one  of  the 
gravest  dangers  to  the  future  of  the  United  Kingdom— 
that  just  when  we  need  increased  production  to  pay  for 
the  expenditure  incurred  in  the  war  we  may  lose  by  emi- 
gration a  large  proportion  of  the  most  active  and  enter- 
prising of  our  population,  and  thus  increase  the  burden 
upon  those  who  remain.  In  order  to  avoid  depopulation 
of  a  cumulative  and  disastrous  type,  the  State  must 
exert  itself  to  provide  fresh  outlets  for  employment, 
and  the  land  presents  the  most  fruitful  opportunity. 
Nothing  will  better  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  situation 
than  a  more  intensive  employment  of  the  land  ;  it  is  a 
comparatively  undeveloped  national  asset,  and  its  utili- 
zation will  menace  no  existing  industry  but  will  result  in 
the  direct  production  by  labour  alone  of  real  wealth  from 
our  existing  resources.  It  will  also  be  production  of  the 
most  necessary  of  all  materials,  the  demand  for  which 
springs  from  the  fundamental  needs  of  the  community 
and  does  not  depend  on  the  possession  of  a  margin  for 
superfluities.  After  the  war  many  classes  of  the  com- 
munity will  be  impoverished  by  taxation  and  their 
power  of  making  purchases  abroad  will  be  corre- 
spondingly reduced ;  the  nation  as  a  whole  will  have  to 
work  harder  and  to  depend  as  much  as  possible  upon  its 
own  internal  resources,  of  which  the  land  has  been  the 
least  exploited. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   DECLINE   OF  BRITISH  AGRICULTURE 

It  is  necessary  to  elaborate  this  latter  proposition — 
that  the  land  of  the  British  Isles  is  capable  of  much 
greater  production  than  is  at  present  obtained,  and 
that,  too,  at  a  cost  which  is  profitable  to  the  community 
as  a  whole.  The  history  of  British  agriculture  for  the 
last  forty  years  has  been  one  of  continuous  decline  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  gross  production  from  British 
soil,  and  without  considering  the  advances  made  by 
individual  farmers  or  the  progress  in  particular  direc- 
tions, such  as  fruit-growing  and  market-gardening. 
The  changes  are  perhaps  most  easily  followed  when 
expressed  graphically,  accordingly  Fig.  i  has  been 
drawn  to  show  for  England,  Wales  and  Scotland,  the 
total  cultivated  area  and  the  area  under  arable  farming 
for  the  period  1870  to  1914.  In  Fig.  2  the  numbers  of 
milch  cows,  other  cattle,  and  sheep  are  shown  for  the 
same  peiiod,  together  with  a  curve  indicating  the  aver- 
age price  of  beef  and  mutton.  Finally,  in  Fig.  3,  the 
various  curves  provide  a  comparison  of  the  arable  area 
in  England  and  Wales  with  the  population  engaged  in 
agriculture,  and  the  rate  of  wages  with  the  estimated 
average  cash  return  from  an  acre  of  arable  land  for  the 
same  period,  1870-1914. 

It 


CULTIVATED  AND  ARABLE  AREAS   19 


FIG.  I. 


1910    1914 


20    DECLINE  OF  BRITISH  AGRICULTURE 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  total  cultivated  area — crops 
and  grass — ^has  changed  but  little .  There  was  some  rise 
in  the  early  'nineties ;  since  that  time  there  has  been 
a  small  decrease,  due  in  the  main  to  agricultural  land 
being   taken  for  various  urban  purposes,   industrial 


and  residential.  Latterly  there  has  been  no  attempt 
to  deal  with  the  considerable  area  of  waste  land 
that  lies  on  the  margin  of  cultivation  ;  the  processes 
of  reclamation  that  had  been  steadily  going  on  up 
to  1892  then  ceased  in  England,  and  owners  have  not 
invested  capital  in  any  further  winning  of  unused  land 
for  cultivation. 


LOSS  OF  ARABLE  LAND 


21 


The   most   marked   change   has   been   the   steady 
conversion  of  arable  land  into  ^rass.       In  England 


©TO 

leeo 

FIG.   3 

1890 

I9C0 

I&IO         191 

16 
15 



\ 

\ 

\ 

'^ 

\^ 

\ 

13 
\Z 
II 
10 
9 
8 

"^ 

v^ 

\ 
\ 

^\ 

"\ 

^"• 

-^■\. 

\ 

-\ 

. 

•-. 

_,/S 

"J 

/^ 

. ^ 

_^ 

[> 

^^ — ■"'' 

J 

Returns  per  acre  of  arable  land  (average  for  five  years)  in  tens  of 

shillings. 
Area  of  arable  land  in  million  acres. 
Number  of  persons  engaged  in  agriculture  in  hundred  thousands. 

,  Average  weekly  cash  wages  compared  with  wages  in  1900,  when  the 
average  wage  was  15s.,  equivalent  to  about  18s.  total  earnings. 


Each  division  of  the  scale  above  or  below  10 
below  15s. 


Is.  6d.  above  or 


and  Wales  the  area  under  the  plough  reached  its 
maximum,  13,839,369  acres,  in  1872  ;  by  1914  it  had 


22    DECLINE  OF  BRITISH  AGRICULTURE 

fallen  to  10,306,467  acres — a  loss  of  26  per  cent. 
This  process  was  undoubtedly  brought  about  in  the 
earher  part  of  the  period  by  the  great  fall  in  prices 
which  set  in  during  the  later  'seventies  and  'eighties. 
Arable  farming  as  then  practised  ceased  to  be  re- 
munerative on  the  heavier  and  poorer  soils ;  meat 
and  milk  maintained  their  values  better ;  so  that 
the  only  way  open  to  the  farmer  to  obtain  a  profit  was 
to  reduce  his  labour  bill  and  to  take  the  small  but  com- 
paratively certain  return  that  the  land  would  yield 
under  grass.  Naturally,  the  process  went  on  unequally 
in  different  parts  of  the  country ;  the  arable  farming 
was  chiefly  maintained  in  the  East,  where  the  rainfallv 
are  light,  thus  rendering  the  grass  less  remunerative, 
and  where  operations  of  cultivation  and  harvest  are 
least  interfered  with  by  the  weather.  Still,  even  the 
Eastern  Counties  like  Essex,  where  heavy  clay  soils 
predominate,  were  largely  laid  down  to  grass,  while 
areas  of  light  soil  in  the  West,  such  as  parts  of  Shrop- 
shire, continued  their  arable  faiming. 

The  change  from  arable  to  grass  has  been  accom- 
panied by  an  increase  in  the  number  of  cattle  kept 
but  by  a  decrease  in  the  number  of  sheep,  which, 
in  English  agriculture,  are  for  the  main  part  associated 
with  arable  farming  and  fed  upon  green  crops  grown 
on  the  plough  land.  With  the  loss  of  the  arable 
acreage  the  gross  output  of  food  has  declined,  more  in 
quantity  than  in  value,  because  corn  has  been  replaced 
by  meat  and  milk  of  which  the  fall  in  price  has  been 
less  pronounced.  In  Table  V.  a  comparison  is  made 
between  the  output  of  1913  and  that  of  1872,  assuming 
the  prices  of  1908  (see  Table  III)  and  the  same  yields 
per  acre  and  production  from  a  given  head  of  stock  in 


REDUCTION  OF  OUTPUT 


23 


the  two  years.  Only  wheat,  barley,  potatoes,  milk  and 
milk  products,  meat  and  wool  are  supposed  to  be  sold, 
the  other  crops  being  consumed  in  feeding  the  stock. 


TABLE  V. — AGRICULTURAL  OUTPUT  OF  ENGLAND  AND  WALES, 
1872  AND  I913 


1872. 
Thous'd 

1913. 
Thous'd 

Total  Value  of 
Produce. 
I  miUions. 

acres. 

acres. 

1872. 

1913- 

Wheat 
Barley 
Potatoes 

3>463 
2,064 

387 

1,702 

1,559 
442 

22.07 

11-37 
6.66 

10.85 

8.59 
7.60 

Milch  cows  &  heifers 
Other  cattle 
Sheep 
Pigs 

Thous'd 

1774 

2,731 

20,780 

2,586 

animals. 
2,264 

3,453 

17,130 

2,102 

19.19 
17.84 

15-94 
12.94 

24.48 
22.73 
13.14 
10.69 

106.01 

98.08 

The  table  exaggerates  the  actual  oiitput  in  1872  as  re- 
gards quantity,  because  at  that  time  the  yields  per  acre 
were  somewhat  lighter  and  a  given  head  of  stock  did  not 
produce  so  much  meat  in  a  year  because  of  their  slower 
maturity,  though  on  the  other  hand  there  was  less 
purchase  of  foreign  grain  and  feeding  stuffs  in  1872. 
More  correctly  the  table  may  be  taken  to  represent 
what  would  have  been  the  output  in  1913  had  the 
acreage,  etc.,  remained  the  same  as  in  1872.  It  will  be 
seen  that  the  value  of  the  output  from  the  increased 
head  of  cattle  barely  balances  the  loss  on  the  sheep, 


24    DECLINE  OF  BRITISH  AGRICULTURE 

and  if  we  further  take  the  pigs  into  account  the 
lessened  production  of  wheat  and  barley  is  not  com- 
pensated for  at  all  by  the  increase  in  the  produce 
from  the  stock.  This  agrees  with  the  conclusion  to 
be  discussed  later  that  a  given  area  of  land  will  produce, 
when  under  the  plough,  in  addition  to  its  usual  yield 
of  wheat  and  barley,  just  as  much  cattle  food  as  the 
same  area  of  land  under  grass. 

The  number  of  men  employed  in  agriculture  has 
declined  with  the  plough  land  ;  loo  acres  of  arable  land 
will  employ  as  many  as  four  men,  while  200  or  300  acres 
of  grazing  can  be  looked  after  by  a  single  man.  During 
the  forty  years  under  review  three  and  a  half  million 
acres  have  passed  from  arable  to  grass,  and  261  thousand 
men  have  left  agriculture — seven  men  for  each  hundred 
acres  that  have  been  laid  down.  The  loss  of  employment 
would  have  been  greater  but  for  two  causes — the  develop- 
ment of  certain  fruit  and  market  gardening  areas  which 
employ  a  large  number  of  men,  and  the  fact  that,  as  all 
farmers  attest,  the  average  quality  of  the  labourers  has 
deteriorated  ;  the  best  and  most  active  have  been  the 
ones  to  go  into  other  occupations.  On  the  other  hand, 
farming  operations  have  been  improved  and  call  for 
less  manual  labour  ;  the  introduction  of  the  self-binder 
alone  has  enabled  the  arable  farmer  to  dispense  with 
one  of  the  heaviest  of  his  former  calls  for  labour,  and 
many  of  the  other  operations  have  been  cheapened  by 
the  use  of  machines.  This  is  reflected  in  the  fact  that 
the  decrease  in  the  number  of  agricultural  horses  is 
proportionally  much  less  than  the  diminution  in  the 
men  employed. 

The  great  fall  in  prices  came  to  an  end,  however, 
about  1895  ;  since  1900  they  have  been  steadily  rising. 


DECLINE  OF  AGRICULTURAL  POPULATION   25 

and  with  the  readjustment  of  rents  arable  farming  has, 
during  the  present  century,  again  become  remunerative 
and  attained  a  measure  of  prosperity  that  began  to  be 
manifest  about  1910  in  a  widespread  demand  for  farms 
and  in  rising  rents  wherever  reletting  took  place.  The 
conversion  of  arable  to  grass  did  not,  however,  cease  ; 
the  curve  shows  that  it  has  continued  at  much  the  same 
rate  during  the  present  century  as  in  the  preceding 
tw^enty  years  ;  in  fact,  it  has  even  been  accelerated 
during  the  years  immediately  prior  to  the  war,  though 
prices  were  then  still  rising.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
about  the  prosperity  of  the  industry  from  1910  to 
the  outbreak  of  war.  Accounts  are  available  show- 
ing that  good  arable  farmers  were  then  making  profits 
of  from  10  to  20  per  cent,  on  their  capital,  yet  the  area 
under  the  plough  continued  to  decline.  For  this  fact 
several  explanations  may  be  adduced.  In  the  first 
place  the  cost  of  labour  was  increasing,  and  there  were 
difficulties  in  obtaining  and  keeping  good  men.  Indus- 
trial prosperity  and  the  great  agricultural  emigration 
to  Canada  during  the  years  about  1910  drew  many  of  the 
younger  and  more  energetic  men  away  from  the  farms. 
Speaking  generally,  farmers  failed  to  recognize  the 
changed  situation ;  they  only  reluctantly  and  inade- 
quately raised  wages  to  meet  the  competition  for  their 
men ;  in  many  cases  they  preferred  to  reduce  their 
staff  and  lay  down  part  of  their  land  to  grass.  Though 
they  might  admit  that  the  higher  prices  ruling  would 
allow  of  increased  wages,  there  has  always  existed  a 
strong  personal  feeling  and  even  a  certain  amount  of 
social  pressure  on  the  side  of  the  maintenance  of  the  local 
standard  rate  of  wages,  until  the  farmer  felt  it  almost 
a  duty  to  his  fellows  to  let  a  discontented  man  go  rather 
c 


26    DECLINE   OF   BRITISH  AGRICULTURE 

than  meet  his  demands  for  higher  pay.  To  a  large 
extent  also  the  farmer  felt  little  confidence  in  the 
permanent  improvement  of  the  agricultural  position ; 
the  remembrance  of  the  disasters  of  the  great  depression 
were  still  strongly  with  him  ;  he  had  been  bred  up  to  a 
cautious  farming  policy,  and  so  preferred  to  invest  his 
recent  profits  otherwise  than  in  extending  his  business. 
The  leaders  and  advisers  of  the  agricultural  community 
— landlords,  agents,  solicitors  and  valuers — continued 
to  take  a  pessimistic  view  of  the  prospects  of  agriculture 
long  after  it  has  been  justified  by  the  actual  course  of 
business  ;  with  them  bad  times  have  grown  into  a  fixed 
tradition,  and,  moreover,  the  whole  agricultural  com- 
munity became  quite  unnecessarily  alarmed  by  the 
trend  of  legislation  and  political  dealings  with  land 
during  the  years  immediately  preceding  the  war.  It 
should  be  remembered  also  that  the  majority  of  farmers 
regard  their  occupation  as  providing  a  living  rather 
than  as  a  means  of  making  money  which  can  be  ex- 
tended and  developed.  They  accept  their  routine  as 
something  inevitable,  not  susceptible  of  change — to 
alter  would  be  "  bad  farming,"  whatever  the  results  ; 
if  times  are  good  there  is  more  money  to  be  saved  or 
put  aside,  but  they  do  not  feel  called  upon  to  respond 
to  the  new  opportunities  and  enlarge  their  business. 
They  are  doing  very  well  as  they  are,  and  are  not  pre- 
pared to  change  from  their  policy  of  safety  except 
under  pressure.  We  have  in  all  considerations  of  agri- 
culture to  reckon  with  the  temperament  and  equipment 
of  the  men  who  are  actually  holding  the  bulk  of  British 
land  at  the  present  moment.  Speaking  generally,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  they  are  insufficiently  educated 
and  short  of  capital  for  the  business  they  have  in  hand. 


CONSERVATIVE  FARMING  METHODS     27 

Putting  aside  a  substantial  minority  and  many  brilliant 
exceptions,  they  have  not  been  touched  by  the  revival 
of  agricultural  education  that  has  taken  place  during 
the  last  twenty  years  and  do  not  take  advantage  of  the 
technical  assistance  that  is  now  at  their  service.  Most 
of  all  their  business  training  is  at  fault ;  they  often  are 
capable  enough  craftsmen,  but  they  are  bound  within 
a  narrow  routine  and  show  no  adapt abihty  either  in 
their  management  or  in  their  buying  and  selling.  On 
the  average  farm  the  expert  cannot  say  "  do  this  "  or 
"  use  that  "  and  success  will  ensue  ;  he  sees  instead  a 
general  low  level  both  of  knowledge  and  of  management. 
In  every  district  certain  farms  stand  out ;  and  if  the 
neighbouring  holdings,  with  the  same  class  of  land  and 
the  same  opportunities,  were  only  worked  with  equal 
intelligence  and  energy  there  would  be  no  agricultural 
problem  to  discuss.  In  many  parts  of  the  country  it  is 
clear  that  the  farmer  is  occupying  more  land  than  he 
can  properly  manage  with  the  capital  at  his  disposal. 
During  the  depression,  men  who  could  in  any  way  make 
a  living  by  farming  got  hold  of  comparatively  large 
tracts  of  land,  often  putting  several  holdings  together  ; 
by  cutting  down  expenses  they  succeeded  in  obtaining 
a  working  profit  off  these  extended  areas,  and  though 
prices  have  latterly  justified  a  more  intensive  policy 
they  still  continue  to  let  the  land  do  the  work  with  the 
minimum  of  effort  on  their  part.  An  indictment  might 
be  framed  against  the  landlords  for  not  insisting  upon 
higher  farming  on  the  part  of  their  tenants,  even  for  not 
raising  rents  to  the  pitch  that  would  force  men  to  a 
better  use  of  the  land  they  occupy.  But  landlords  were 
hard  hit  in  the  depression,  and  then  learnt  to  stick  to 
any  tenant  who  could  continue  to  make  the  land  earn 


28   DECLINE    OF   BRITISH  AGRICULTURE 

something.  They  had  no  prospect  of  getting  superior 
tenants  ;  the  industry  was  not  attracting  new  men  with 
capital  and  brains  ;  the  safe  pohcy  for  them,  as  for  their 
tenants,  was  to  rest  content  with  the  small  returns  in 
sight  rather  than  to  adventure  on  a  policy  that  must 
increase  their  risks  and  trouble.  Land- owning  in 
England  has  ceased  to  be  a  business  ;  yet  it  is  only  by 
personal  knowledge  and  hard  work  that  owners  can 
become  leaders  of  their  tenants  and  develop  the  capaci- 
ties of  their  estates.  Social  tradition  on  the  other  hand 
bade,  them  be  content  with  a  low  interest  on  their 
capital,  compensated  for  by  sport  and  position.  More- 
over, land  always  has  a  monopoly  value,  and  in  a 
prosperous  country  opportunities  come  from  time  to 
time  for  profitable  sales. 


CHAPTER  III 

ARABLE  LAND  VERSUS  GRASS 

Explain  it  or  excuse  it  as  we  will,  the  fact  remains  that 
for  the  last  generation  the  cultivation  of  the  land  in 
England  has  been  declining :  crops  have  been  giving 
place  to  grass,  and  the  gross  output  in  quantity,  even 
more  than  in  value,  has  been  diminishing.  It  is  per- 
haps necessary  to  elaborate  the  point  that  grass  land  is 
less  productive  than  arable.  Many  people  have  argued 
that  live  stock  form  the  mainstay  of  British  agriculture, 
which  remains  without  rival  in  the  way  it  has  made 
itself  the  source  and  origin  of  the  high-class  sires  that 
are  needed  to  improve  the  ordinary  country  stock  of 
the  whole  world.  Whether  he  breeds  horses,  cattle,  sheep 
or  pigs,  the  progressive  farmer  in  our  own  Dominions  or 
in  foreign  countries  must  come  to  England  for  the 
foundations  of  his  business,  and  must  replenish  his 
herds  and  flocks  from  time  to  time  from  our  pure  stocks. 
Apart  from  pedigree  breeding,  it  is  also  argued  that  the 
production  of  milk  and  meat  is  both  more  profitable 
to  the  English  farmer  and  more  valuable  to  the  nation 
than  the  growth  of  corn.  All  this  may  be  admitted,  and 
yet  the  implied  corollary  is  not  true — that  live  stock 
can  only  be  maintained  upon  grass  land,  or  that  an 
equal  head  of  stock  can  be  kept  upon  grass  as  upon  the 

»9 


30    ARABLE  LAND  VERSUS  GRASS 

same  land  under  the  plough.  All  land  is  more  produc- 
tive under  the  plough,  and  will  maintain  more  cattle 
and  sheep  upon  the  crops  that  can  be  grown  than  upon 
the  grass  which  is  produced  without  cultivation.  It 
does  not  follow  that  it  would  be  economic  or  more  pro- 
fitable to  plough  up  the  old  fatting  pastures  that  are 
the  pride  of  some  parts  of  England,  or  again,  some  of 
the  very  heavy  clay  pastures  that  are  so  expensive  and 
uncertain  to  work,  though  the  limitations  as  regards  the 
latter  are  less  than  is  generally  supposed.  We  have  as 
a  guide  the  fact  that  three  and  a  half  million  acres  have 
been  laid  down  to  grass  duiing  the  last  forty  years  ;  all 
this  has  once  been  profitable  under  the  plough,  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  most  of  it  could  be  brought 
under  cultivation  again,  for  farming  operations  have 
now  been  made  cheaper  and  quicker,  more  is  known  as 
to  the  amelioration  of  the  texture  of  heavy  land,  and 
drainage  is  more  efficacious.  Over  very  large  areas  of 
the  country  now  under  grass  the  pasture  is  indifferent — 
it  will  not  fatten  stock  nor  produce  much  milk  ;  when 
laid  up  for  hay  it  produces  but  a  poor  crop  unless 
the  season  is  favourable ;  it  is  only  profitable  be- 
cause the  rent  is  low  and  the  expenditure  on  labour 
trifling.  Much  of  it  ought  to  be  ploughed  up  from  time 
to  time  even  if  it  is  to  carry  good  grass  ;  when  left  down 
for  many  years  the  texture  of  the  soil  suffers,  aeration 
becomes  deficient,  and  the  herbage  grows  sparse  and 
deteriorates  in  quality.  Without  doubt  this  grass  can 
be  enormously  improved  as  pasture  by  careful  manage- 
ment and  the  application  of  manures,  especially  basic 
slag  ;  but  so  content  is  the  farmer  with  the  cheapness 
of  the  land  and  of  his  methods  that  even  this  improve- 
ment is  neglected.    The  relative  production  from  arable 


LOW  RETURNS  FOR  GRASS  LAND   31 

and  grass  land  of  the  same  class  may  be  estimated  from 
the  following  examples  : 

(a)  One  acre  of  wheat  will  produce  4  qr.  grain 
and  1 1  tons  straw.  This  food  material  fed  to  cattle 
will  produce  450  lb.  live  weight  increase,  equivalent 
to  256  lb.  of  meat,  or  360  gals,  of  milk. 

The  same  acre  of  land  under  grass  will  produce 
I J  tons  of  hay  (including  the  aftermath),  which, 
when  fed,  would  produce  210  lb.  live  weight  increase, 
or  120  lb.  of  meat,  or  168  gals,  of  milk. 

The  figures  for  the  conversion  of  wheat  and  straw  or  hay 
into  meat  and  milk  are  calculated  from  the  accepted  tables 
for  the  conversion  of  food  values  into  meat  or  milk.  In 
practice  it  is  estimated  that  when  cows  are  entirely  grass  fed 
upon  land  of  this  quality,  the  yield  of  milk  is  about  150  gals, 
per  acre  per  annum.  On  this  estimate  the  production  of 
meat  or  milk  from  arable  land  is  more  than  double  that  from 
the  same  land  under  grass. 

(b)  One  acre  of  grass  land  supporting  breeding 
stock  will  produce  about  135  lb.  increase  of  weight  as 
calf  and  20  lb.  increase  in  the  weight  of  the  young 
cow — 155  lb.  in  all. 

The  same  land  when  ploughed  and  farmed  under  a 
rotation  of  wheat  (twice),  barley,  oats,  roots,  and 
clover  will  produce  a  yearly  average  of  660  lb.  of 
wheat  and  330  lb.  barley,  in  addition  to  the  same  in- 
crease in  cow  and  calf,  155  lb.,  from  the  consumption 
of  the  oats,  roots  and  clover  hay  also  grown  on  the 
acre  of  land. 

In  this  second  example,  if  the  wheat  and  barley  grain  were 
also  fed  to  stock,  the  production  of  meat  alone  would  be 
more  than  double  that  obtained  from  the  grass. 


32  ARABLE  LAND  VERSUS  GRASS 

(c)  If  we  compare  the  amount  of  absolute  food 
(lbs.  of  starch  equivalent,  see  Table  VIII,  p.  94)  grown 
upon  arable  land  and  permanent  grass,  taking  the 
recorded  average  yields  in  Great  Britain  for  the  ten 
years  1901-12,  we  obtain  the  following  figures : 
Barley,  1,716  lb. ;  oats,  1,576  lb. ;  roots  and  green 
crops,  2,418  lb.  ;  rotation  grass,  840  lb. ;  permanent 
grass,  645  lb.  A  rotation  of  three  years  of  grain  crops, 
one  of  roots  and  one  of  seeds,  would  produce  a  yearly 
average  of  1,653  lb.  of  starch  equivalent  against 
645  lb.  from  the  permanent  grass  ;  and  a  Wiltshire 
rotation  of  two  years  of  root  and  green  crops  followed 
by  two  straw  crops  would  produce  annually  2,032  lb. 
of  starch  equivalent.  Thus  the  arable  land  of  the 
country  is  at  present  producing  from  2  J  to  3  times  as 
much  cattle  food  per  acre  as  the  permanent  grass. 

Mr.  T.  H.  Middleton  [Journal  Board  Agriculture, 
XXII,  1915,  p.  520)  sets  out  certain  comparisons  of  the 
yield  from  arable  and  grass  land.  On  grazing  land 
the  live  weight  increase  per  acre  varies  from  330  lb. 
on  exceptional  pasture,  to  211  lb.  on  medium  grass 
manured  and  to  as  little  as  50  lb.  on  really  poor  grass. 
The  milk  yields  vary  from  260  to  190  gallons  per  acre. 
Mr.  Middleton 's  estimate  of  the  produce  of  one  acre  of 
arable  land  is  160  lb.  of  live  weight  increase,  together 
with  315  lb.  of  flour,  448  lb.  of  potatoes,  and  494  lb.  of 
beer. 

From  all  the  evidence  we  may  conclude  that  the 
crops  from  land  under  the  plough,  when  used  for 
feeding  cattle  will  produce  of  either  meat  or  milk  more 
than  twice  as  much  as  the  same  land  will  yield  when 
under  grass,  though  as  a  rule  'part  of  these  crops  are 


CATTLE  FOOD  FROM  ARABLE  LAND     33 

more  profitably  sold.  Even  in  that  case  the  average 
arable  land  will  produce  as  much  meat  per  acre  as  the 
grass,  in  addition  to  the  wheat  and  barley  it  has  to  sell. 
It  may  be  argued  that  in  many  districts  the  prevailing 
weather  is  such  that  the  risks  attending  corn  growing 
make  it  an  unprofitable  enterprise  ;  in  that  case  it  has 
been  shown  that  the  cereals  can  be  very  largely  re- 
placed by  rapidly  growing  green  crops — rape,  vetches, 
etc. — by  which  means  the  actual  production  of  cattle 
food  is  even  greater  than  when  corn  crops  are  grown. 
Despite  the  doubled  production  upon  arable  as  com- 
pared with  the  same  land  in  grass,  the  profit  to  the 
farmer  may  be  no  greater ;  it  may  even  be  less  if  the 
prices  of  grain  are  low  and  those  of  labour  high.  Taking 
the  second  case  outlined  above,  the  wheat  and  barley 
produced  on  the  arable  land  over  and  above  the  meat 
(which  is  the  same  on  both  the  grass  and  arable  land) 
would  be  worth  about  70s.  (wheat  at  36s.  per  quarter, 
barley  at  32s.).  Against  this  would  have  to  be  set  about 
7s.  for  artificial  manures,  5s.  for  miscellaneous  bills,  8s. 
for  horse  hire,  and  35s.  for  labour  per  acre  per  annum  ; 
total,  55s.  On  the  other  hand,  the  grazier  would  have  to 
pay  only  about  3s.  per  acre  per  annum  for  labour  and 
horse  hire,  as  he  will  only  employ  men  at  the  rate  of 
one  man  per  300  acres  as  against  three  men  per  100 
acres  required  by  the  arable  farmer.  Thus  the  cash 
difference  in  favour  of  the  arable  farmer  only  amounts 
to  1 8s.  per  acre,  out  of  which  he  has  to  provide  for  the 
interest  on  capital  required  (an  extra  £5  per  acre, 
equivalent  to  5s.  per  acre  annual  charge),  the  depre- 
ciation on  his  implements,  and  the  much  greater 
risks  involved  in  the  business  as  well  as  the  increased 
labour  of  supervision. 


34  ARABLE  LAND  VERS^V^S  GRASS 

How  large  the  profits  may  be  upon  grass  land,  with 
its  low  rate  of  employment,  may  be  judged  froni  the 
following  abstract  from  the  accounts  of  a  large  dairy 
farm : 

Area — about  700  acres,  60  acres  arable. 

Men  employed — five. 

Capital  per  acre — £5. 

Return  on  capital  without  charging  for  manage- 
ment— 27.5  per  cent. 
There  is  still  a  very  substantial  profit  on  arable  land 
with  wheat  and  barley  at  the  prices  assumed  above  ;  but 
the  trend  of  the  agricultural  returns  for  the  last  few  years 
prove  the  majority  of  farmers  do  not  consider  that  this 
profit  makes  up  for  the  greater  capital  required  and 
the  constant  labour,  anxiety  and  risk  attending  arable 
farming.  In  fact,  as  long  as  considerable  areas  of  grazing 
land  are  to  be  hired  cheaply  the  farmer  considers  that 
he  obtains  an  easier  and  safer  return  on  his  available 
capital  by  grazing  than  by  putting  the  land  under  the 
plough.  His  personal  profit  does  not  coincide  with  the 
national  interest,  either  in  the  direction  of  the  produc- 
tion of  food  or  in  the  maintenance  of  men  upon  the  land. 
The  real  limitation,  however,  lies  in  the  lack  of  skill  and 
enterprise  among  the  farmers  of  the  country  taken 
collectively  ;  in  order  to  obtain  a  given  income  a  higher 
measure  of  these  qualities  is  required  by  the  arable 
farmer  than  by  the  grazier  possessed  of  an  equal  amount 
of  capital.  To  the  really  enterprising  arable  farmer 
are  open  many  opportunities  for  profit  that  are  not 
available  to  the  grazier ;  with  due  skill  his  farming  can 
be  intensified,  whereas  little  speeding  up  is  possible 
in  the  output  from  grass.  For  example,  in  many 
districts  we  find   the  arable  farmer  growing  special 


OPPORTUNITIES  OF  THE  ARABLE  FARMER  35 

crops  from  which  under  good  conditions  he  reaps  a 
considerable  return,  but  which  he  turns  to  other  uses 
if  the  market  is  unfavourable.  He  may  sow  greens, 
cabbage  or  broccoli,  saleable  at  good  prices  on  occasion 
and  always  utilizable  for  sheep  keep ;  he  may  leave 
some  second-cut  clover  for  seed,  or  make  good  money 
out  of  potato  growing.  In  every  part  of  the  country  we 
may  see  instances  of  the  way  a  really  knowledgeable 
farmer  on  the  look  out  for  opportunities  makes  success- 
ful departures  from  the  ordinary  routine  of  his  business 
and  obtains  a  general  average  of  profit  far  higher  than 
set  out  in  the  typical  case  quoted.  Success  of  this  kind 
is  dependent  upon  the  farmer  himself.  We  possess 
farmers  full  of  enterprise,  none  better ;  but  their  example 
is  not  generally  followed,  their  methods  have  not  been 
systematized  so  as  to  become  the  ordinary  standard  of 
agriculture.  Many  farmers  are  short  of  capital  for  the 
size  of  their  holdings ;  they  cannot,  if  they  would,  depart 
from  the  routine  of  the  minimum  of  cultivation ;  still 
more  are  the  necessary  personal  qualities  of  knowledge, 
determination  and  enterprise  lacking. 

Under  ordinary  conditions  it  would  have  been  wise 
to  trust  to  the  slow  but  sure  spread  of  education  to 
bring  farming  up  to  a  higher  level.  Of  late  years  the 
necessary  fabric  of  instruction  and  research  has  been 
to  some  extent  provided,  its  effects  were  beginning 
to  be  felt,  and  though  many  people  may  consider  that 
its  action  was  hampered  by  our  system  of  land  tenure, 
this,  in  its  turn,  would  have  been  reshaped  by  a  more 
enlightened  agricultural  community,  and  the  first  steps 
towards  enlightenment  were  being  taken.  We  might 
have  counted  on  the  known  profits  of  agriculture 
attracting  more  men  and  fresh  capital  into  the  business, 


36    ARABLE  LAND  VERSUS  GRASS 

whereupon  the  increased  demand  for  land  would  have 
resulted  in  the  displacement  of  the  farmer  who  lived  by 
skimming  a  large  area  of  cheap  land ;  either  he  would 
have  to  give  place  to  a  man  with  more  adequate  capital, 
or  he  would  have  to  yield  up  part  of  his  land  and  con- 
centrate his  capital  on  the  rest.  More  intensive  methods 
and  a  bigger  output  would  have  followed  ;  against  the 
increased  expenses  costs  could  be  reduced  by  improved 
organization  and  the  introduction  of  machinery  ;  wages 
would  be  increased  to  meet  the  demand  for  a  more 
technically  skilled  labourer.  Taken  by  themselves, 
improved  organization  and  machinery  would  tend  to 
reduce  the  number  of  men  upon  the  land  ;  but  if  they 
are  employed  to  correct  the  costliness  of  a  more 
intensive  agriculture  and  an  increased  productivity, 
both  the  requirements  of  the  State  for  further  produc- 
tivity and  more  employment,  and  that  of  the  individual 
for  profit,  can  be  met. 

Where  the  land  is  in  excess,  as  in  the  new  countries, 
undoubtedly  the  maximum  production  and  profit 
per  man  is  to  be  obtained  by  farming  wide  areas 
in  the  cheapest  way  possible ;  as  soon  as  the  amount 
of  land  and  not  the  number  of  men  become  the 
limiting  factor  intensive  agriculture  is  necessary. 
Now  the  paradox  that  England  presents  of  a  limited 
amount  of  land  in  close  proximity  to  the  best  markets 
of  the  world,  accompanied  by  farming  that  is  yearly 
growing  less  instead  of  more  intensive,  is  only  susceptible 
of  one  explanation — that  the  amount  of  land  is  still  in 
excess  of  the  demand  for  it  on  the  part  of  men  who  are 
capable  of  using  it  to  advantage.  Owing  to  the  attrac- 
tions of  other  industries  or  to  the  difficulty  of  access  to 
the  land,  the  number  of  really  skilful  f aimers  has  not 


IMMEDIATE  REORGANIZATION  NEEDED  37 

been  recruited  rapidly  enough  to  maintain  the  standard, 
still  less  to  ensure  progress.  It  was  to  education  that  one 
looked  to  improve  the  quality  of  the  men  entering  upon 
the  business  of  farming,  whereby  the  competition  for  and 
the  management  of  the  limited  area  of  land  available 
would  be  intensified.  But  the  war  has  cut  athwart  all 
such  schemes  for  slow  development ;  the  wholesale  dis- 
organization of  our  social  system  which  must  ensue  not 
only  provides  the  excuse  and  opportunity  for,  but  prac- 
tically necessitates  the  adoption  of  much  more  rapid  and 
drastic  methods  of  regenerating  agriculture  in  order  to 
meet  the  double  purpose  of  providing  food  and  employ- 
ment  within  these  islands. 

Assuming,  then,  that  the  present  position  of  agri- 
culture is  unsatisfactory  and  is  likely  to  become 
worse  as  a  consequence  of  the  war,  it  is  necessary 
to  be  prepared  with  an  agricultural  polxy,  in  which 
the  permanent  interest  of  the  State  must  be  held 
to  override  the  immediate  interests  of  the  existing 
occupiers  of  land,  however  content  they  may  be  with 
the  profits  they  derive  from  the  present  system.  No 
sudden  revolution  is  possible  if  only  for  the  reason  set 
out  above,  that  the  number  of  farmers  possessed  of  the 
desired  standard  of  skill  and  knowledge  falls  short  of 
what  is  required  for  the  proper  utilization  of  our  land, 
and  the  addition  to  that  number  must  be  a  work  of  time. 
Much,  however,  can  be  done  to  start  better  methods 
and  to  break  down  the  barriers  which  confine  access  to 
the  land  to  a  comparatively  limited  class  ;  what  is 
needful  is  that  the  action  of  the  State,  which  is  neces- 
sarily limited,  shall  be  such  as  will  have  a  continuous 
and  increasing  effect  upon  the  industry.  We  take  as 
starting-point  that  the   State  must  secure  the  more 


38    ARABLE  LAND  VERSUS  GRASS 

intensive  cultivation  of  the  land  of  the  United  Kingdom 
and  an  increasing  employment  of  men  upon  the  land, 
both  as  an  insurance  against  war  and  as  a  means  of 
reducing  the  national  indebtedness.  The  process  of 
readjustment  may  involve  some  cost  to  the  State  ;  but 
the  necessity  is  as  great  as  that  of  maintaining  an  army 
or  a  navy,  with  this  difference,  that  the  expenditure  is 
only  an  investment  on  which  a  commercial  return  will 
be  obtained  as  soon  as  the  readjustment  is  complete. 


CHAPTER  IV 

POSSIBLE   DEVELOPMENTS 

In  order  to  bring  about  the  intensification  of  agriculture 
that  is  desired,  five  direct  methods  of  action  by  the  State 
are  available,  over  and  above  indirect  methods  like 
education  or  such  legislative  changes  as  may  remove 
some  of  the  difRculties  attaching  to  the  access  to  land. 

I.     Industrialized  Farms 

In  the  forefront  I  should  place  the  development  in 
Great  Britain  of  extensive  farms  worked  upon  the  same 
principles  as  large  industrial  concerns.  British  agri- 
culture is  distinguished  from  that  of  other  old  settled 
countries  by  the  comparatively  large  size  of  its  holdings ; 
its  typical  farm  is  one  of  from  200  to  500  acres,  and  the 
advanced  position  that  our  agriculture  obtained  during 
the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century — the  develop- 
ment of  improved  methods  of  cultivation  and  of  our 
notable  strains  of  pedigree  stock  and  seeds — was  due  to 
the  enterprise  of  the  larger  farmers  working  with  con- 
siderable capital.  The  process  has,  however,  not  gone 
far  enough,  and  the  existing  tenant  farm  does  not  con- 
stitute a  large  enough  economic  unit  to  utilize  to  the 
full  modern  developments  of  organization  and  scientific 
knowledge. 

This  statement  does  not  fail  to  recognize  that  actually 
the  holdings  in  this  country  are  very  often  too  large  for 
the  occupier's  capital,  so  that  they  are  worked  at  a  low 

39 


40  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

productive  level  with  a  comparatively  small  expenditure 
on  labour  per  acre.  Not  only  is  capital  generally  defi- 
cient, but  in  many  cases  where  the  occupier  may  be 
possessed  of  adequate  means  his  standard  of  manage- 
ment is  so  low,  his  business  organization  so  imperfect, 
that  he  relies  for  his  profits  upon  cheap  farming  over 
an  extensive  area.  In  most  districts  one  is  familiar 
with  the  successful  farmer,  who  during  the  depression 
learnt  how  to  manage  his  land  cheaply  to  meet  the 
prevailing  prices,  and  then  and  since  has  put  farm  to 
farm  until  he  has  control  of  a  scattered  area  of  two  to 
five  thousand  acres.  As  managers  of  each  of  the  farms 
making  up  his  total  he  employs  uneducated  bailiffs ; 
the  buying  and  selling  is  the  only  part  of  the  business 
that  is  unified  in  his  own  hands,  and  even  that  business 
is  often  conducted  in  the  most  personal  fashion  without 
any  system  of  accounts.  There  is  no  organization  com- 
parable to  that  which  any  other  industry  of  the  same 
magnitude  would  possess,  and  the  resulting  social 
structure  is  deplorable.  There  is  one  man  absorbing 
the  profits  of  a  wide  area ;  below  him  are  only  the 
labourers  and  the  few  baiUffs,  whose  wages  are  but 
a  httle  better  than  those  of  the  labourers ;  the  old 
farm  houses  are  either  let  off  or  are  in  a  dilapidated 
condition,  providing  a  few  rooms  for  the  bailiffs  to 
whom  they  are  turned  over. 

The  suggestion  now  put  forward  is  that  large  farms 
of  anything  from  2,000  to  10,000  acres  of  land  should 
be  organized  and  managed  as  business  enterprises, 
each  under  the  control  of  a  general  manager,  but 
with  due  provision  of  assistant  managers  and  heads 
of  departments  to  ensure  efficiency  in  all  the  stages^ 
There  are  no  special  characteristics  about  farming  to 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  FARM  41 

distinguish  it  from  other  business  enterprises ;  its 
fluctuating  returns,  its  risks,  its  dependence  upon 
the  weather  are  best  met  by  working  on  a  large  scale 
so  as  to  equalize  the  chances,  and  with  adequate 
capital  that  will  obviate  the  crippling  of  its  methods 
by  one  or  two  bad  seasons.  Whatever  profits  are 
obtainable  by  the  present  methods  would  certainly  be 
increased  by  working  upon  a  wholesale  scale,  and  the 
obvious  economies  that  are  in  sight  may  be  summed  up 
as  follows  : 

(i)  Economy  in  management.  Under  the  present 
system  the  land  has  to  support  a  farmer  and  his  estab- 
lishment on  each  200  acres  or  thereabouts,  whereas  a 
man  drawing  no  higher  remuneration  from  the  enter- 
prise ought  under  proper  organization  to  be  able  to 
control  four  or  five  times  as  much  land. 

(2)  Economy  in  labour.  On  a  small  farm  machinery 
cannot  be  employed  to  its  full  advantage  ;  the  initial 
expense  and  the  cost  of  the  special  labour  required  are 
often  so  great  that  they  only  become  profitable  when 
continuously  employed  or  applied  over  a  large  acreage, 
g.g.,  a  motor  plough,  costing  ;f3oo  to  ;f400,  however 
cheaply  it  does  its  work  per  acre,  would  be  an  uneco- 
nomic implement  on  a  200  acre  farm.  The  cost  of  many 
farming  operations  can  be  reduced  by  bulking  the 
available  labour  and  directing  large  numbers  to  a 
particular^ purpose  at  the  proper  time. 

(3)  Economy  in  buying  and  selling  wholesale,  in 
avoiding  waste,  in  preparing  for  market  by  methods 
that  are  only  remunerative  on  a  large  scale.  Agriculture 
supports  a  disproportionate  fringe  of  dealers  and  middle- 
men who  live  by  buying  up  small  lots  of  mixed  quality 

D 


42  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

from  the  producers  and  then  grading  and  preparing 
them  for  the  larger  market. 

(4)  Economy  in  the  use  of  the  land  itself.  Over  a 
great  part  of  the  country  fields  are  far  too  small  for 
cheap  working,  the  hedges  and  banks  occupy  a  notable 
percentage  of  the  total  area  and  are  in  themselves 
detrimental  to  the  crops.  Yet  a  farmer  must  have 
several  fields  for  the  convenience  of  his  stock,  and  when 
working  on  a  small  scale  he  cannot  face  the  expense 
of  removing  hedges,  straightening  watercourses,  and 
otherwise  improving  the  workability  of  his  farm. 

(5)  Economies  effected  by  more  skilful  management. 
A  large  enterprise  can  afford  to  pay  for  efficient  direc- 
tion and  scientific  advice.  In  particular  a  proper 
system  of  book-keeping  can  be  applied  to  a  large  farm, 
and  becomes  of  the  utmost  value  by  the  way  it  enables 
the  direction  to  review  results,  detect  mismanagement 
and  waste,  and  drop  unprofitable  branches  of  the 
business.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance 
of  scientific  book-keeping  on  a  costs  basis ;  in  all 
modern  productive  businesses  it  forms  the  foundation 
of  the  management,  yet  it  has  hardly  been  applied  to 
agriculture  in  Great  Britain.  With  more  efficient 
management  and  the  criticism  provided  by  exact 
accounts  will  come  the  power  of  intensifying  the 
production  and  of  testing  and  developing  new  Hues  of 
business. 

Agricultural  enterprises  of  the  character  suggested 
are  few  in  the  British  Islands  ;  they  can,  however,  be 
paralleled  by  the  estates  growing  rubber,  copra,  sugar 
and  other  tropical  products,  but  much  more  closely  by 
the  domain  farms  worked  by  the  great  landowners  and 


PROFITS  OF  ARABLE  FARMING         43 

beet  sugar  corporations  in  Germany  and  by  certain 
syndicate  farms  in  the  East  of  France.  Figures  are 
difficult  to  obtain  in  England,  but  some  idea  of  the 
returns  that  may  be  expected  can  be  obtained  from  the 
following  abstracts  from  the  accounts  of  certain  British 
farms  taken  for  the  few  years  immediately  prior  to  the 
outbreak  of  war : 

1.  About  1,000  acres,  three-quarters  arable. 

Capital  per  acre,  £S  8s. 
Men  per  100  acres,  2^. 

Average  earnings  per  man,  15s.  2d.  per  week. 
Profit,  after  paying  5  per  cent,  on  capital,  but 
including  management,  13. i  per  cent. 

2.  About  4,000  acres,  two-thirds  arable. 

Capital  per  acre,  about  £10. 
Men  per  100  acres,  about  5. 
Average  earnings  per  man,  21s.  6d.  per  week. 
Management,  los.  per  acre  per  annum. 
Profits,  after  paying  5  per  cent,  on  capital,  10.5 
per  cent. 

3.  About  5,000  acres,  three-fourths  arable. 

Capital  per  acre,  about  £8. 

Men  per  100  acres,  4. 

Average  earnings  per  man,  21s.  6d.  per  week. 

Management,  5s.  per  acre  per  annum. 

Profit,  after  paying  5  per  cent.,  12 J  per  cent. 

4.  About  1,500  acres,  four-fifths  arable. 

Capital  per  acre,  about  £12. 
Men  per  100  acres,  7. 

Average  earnings  per  man,  22s.  per  week. 
Management,  5s.  per  acre  per  annum. 
Profit,  after  paying  5  per  cent,  on  capital,  10  per 
cent. 


44  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

5,  About  1000  acres,  three-quarters  arable. 

Capital  per  acre,  £7  los. 
Men  per  100  acres,  2J. 
Average  earnings  per  man,  21s.  2d.  per  week, 
Profit,  after  paying  5  per  cent,  on  capital,  but  in- 
cluding management,  21,6  per  cent. 

6.  About  550  acres,  half  arable. 

Capital  per  acre,  £10. 
Men  per  100  acres,  3. 
Average  wages  per  man,  i6s.  per  week. 
Profit,  after  paying  5  per  cent,  on  capital,  but 
including  management,  16. i  per  cent. 

It  may  be  explained  that  the  gross  production  per 
acre  is  not  given,  because  this  figure  must  vary  with 
the  style  of  farming  adopted — for  example,  a  business 
which  buys  store  stock  heavily  and  fattens  them  to  a 
large  extent  on  purchased  feeding  stuffs  will  show  a  far 
larger  gross  output  than  an  equally  profitable  business- 
which  purchases  little  and  depends  entirely  upon  the 
sale  of  crops.  The  profits  shown  represent  the  net 
proceeds  after  rent,  manures,  labour  and  all  outgoings 
have  been  paid,  and  after  5  per  cent,  has  been  set  aside 
as  interest  on  the  capital  employed  in  the  undertaking. 
In  the  cases  of  2  and  3  the  management  charges  are  set 
down  too  low  ;  they  represent  what  had  been  actually 
paid,  but  they  take  no  account  of  the  considerable  super- 
vision exercised  by  the  proprietors  of  the  respective 
businesses.  It  should  also  be  pointed  out  that  the  six 
enterprises  in  question,  though  differing  widely  in 
character,  are  normal  agricultural  businesses,  deriving 
their  returns  from  farm  crops,  stock  and  milk,  and  not 
from  fruit,  market  garden  produce,  pedigree  stock  or 
other  special  developments.  The  accounts  are  abstracted 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  FARM  45 

for  a  period  in  which  the  farms  were  in  full  working 
order ;  in  some  of  the  earlier  years  when  the  land  was 
being  got  into^  shape  the  profits  were  much  less  than  are 
here  set  out.  Different  as  are  the  conditions  prevailing 
and  the  intensity  of  farming  in  the  several  enterprises, 
they  do  provide  one  common  basis  from  which  the 
results  of  industrial  farming  on  a  large  scale  may  be 
estimated.  The  figures  given  may  be  recalculated  as 
under,  to  show  the  total  earnings  per  annum  for  each 
man  employed,  using  total  earnings  in  the  sense  of  the 
net  proceeds  per  man,  out  of  which  his  wages,  manage- 
ment expenses,  interest  on  capital  and  profits  have  to 
be  paid : 

Farm  i. — Per  100  acres.  £   s.  d. 

Wages  :  2imen  x  52  weeks  X  15s.  2d.         =    98  11    8 
Gross  profit,  18.  i  psr  cent,  on  £8.8  per  acre  =  152    0  10 


£250  12    6 
-f-  2}  =  £100.6  per  man  per  annum. 

Calculating  by  the  same  method  we  obtain  for  Farm 
2,  £97  per  man  per  annum  ;  for  Farm  3,  £97  ;  for  Farm 
4,  £91 ;  for  Farm  5,  £120 ;  for  Farm  6,  £99  per  man 
per  annum. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  figure  for  total  earnings  per 
man  per  annum  comes  out, to  a  sum  which  is  about 
the  same  in  each-  of  the  six  businesses:  approxi- 
mately £100,  and  is  independent  of  the  style  of  farm- 
ing followed  or  the  number  of  men  employed  upon 
a  given  area.  This  provides  a  means  of  estimating 
the  probable  earnings  of  a  large  industrialized  farm. 
Assuming  that  an  area  of  5,000  acres  can  be  obtained 


46  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

of  land  that  is  ordinarily  rented  at  20s.  an  acre  or  a 
little  less,  we  may  expect  that  at  the  outset  about  one- 
half  can  be  worked  as  arable  land,  and  that  three  men 
can  be  employed  per  100  acres  or  150  in  all,  exclusive  of 
the  staff  required  for  management.  The  actual  number 
that  can  be  profitably  occupied  will  depend  upon  the 
quality  of  the  land ;  but  it  would  be  wise  to  begin 
quietly,  without  any  large  departure  from  the  system 
of  farming  previously  followed,  and  to  intensify  the 
agriculture  by  degrees.  A  living  wage  must  be  paid ; 
this  may  be  taken  at  an  average  of  20s.  per  week  with  a 
free  cottage  and  garden,  equivalent  to  25s.  a  week  in 
cash.  Allowing  for  boys  and  old  men  among  the 
employees,  this  average  rate  of  20s.  would  permit  of  a 
higher  wage  for  a  certain  proportion  of  foremen ;  the 
total  annual  labour  bill  for  150  men  would  come  to 
£7,800.  It  may  be  expected  that  the  estate  will  be  in- 
sufficiently provided  with  cottages  ;  if  fifty  additional 
cottages  have  to  be  erected  at  an  average  cost  of  £200 
each,  the  business  will  have  to  bear  an  annual  charge  of 
£600,  allowing  6  per  cent,  for  interest  and  repairs.  The 
expenses  of  management  may  be  estimated  at  about 
£3,000,  made  up  as  follows : 

One  general  manager  charged  with  the 

direction  and  the  buying  and  selling  . .  £800  —  £1,000 
Four  assistant  managers,  each  overseeing 

a  section  of  the  estate  . .         . .         . .  £800 — £1,000 

One  machinery  manager  and  two  skilled 

mechanics          £400 —    £450 

Book-keeper  and  two  clerks       . .         . .  £300  —    £350 

Travelling,  stationery,  etc £350 

£2,650  — £3,150 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  FARM 


47 


Such  a  staff  would  be  ample  for  an  estate  of  5,000  to 
8,000  acres.  Assuming,  then,  that  the  gross  earnings 
per  man  amounted  to  jfioo  per  annum,  as  in  the 
examples  quoted,  and  that  interest  on  the  price  of  the 
land  is  treated  as  rent  and  included  in  the  outgoings 
before  the  gross  earnings  are  calculated,  the  divisible 
receipts  will  amount  to  £15,000,  out  of  which  interest 
has  to  be  provided  on  a  floating  capital  of  ;f40,ooo  at 
£S  per  acre.  The  profit  and  loss  account  therefore 
becomes : 


Earnings  of  150  men 

Interest   on    capital 

at  £100  per  annum  £15,000 

at  5  per  cent.      . .  £2,000 

Interest  on  cottages 

at  6  per  cent.      . .     £600 

Wages         . .         . .  £7,800 

Management          . .  £3,000 

Balance       . .         . .  £1,600 

£i5>ooo 

— 

£15,000 

The  balance  plus  the  interest  makes  up  a  total  return 
of  9  per  cent,  on  the  floating  capital  invested  in  the 
business,  which  may  be  considered  as  a  satisfactory 
return  considering  that  the  labourers  are  being  paid  not 
on  the  basis  of  existing  rates  of  wage  but  what  a  reason- 
ably prosperous  and  permanent  industry  ought  to  pay. 
Were  the  enterprise  treated  as  a  profit-sharing  scheme 
the  balance  would  be  sufficient  to  pay  a  dividend  of 
12  per  cent,  on  salaries,  wages,  and  interest,  making  the 
labourers'  cash  wages  average  22s.  6d.  per  week  and  the 
interest  on  the  floating  capital  over  5 J  per  cent.  On 
the  other  hand,  as  the  farm  gets  under  way,  it  must  be 


48  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

expected  that  the  farming  will  be  intensified  and  a 
larger  number  of  men  employed  upon  the  same  area. 
This  will  add  to  the  total  earnings  without  increasing 
the  capital,  management,  rent  and  other  of  the  out- 
goings in  the  same  proportion,  thus  raising  the  divisible 
profits  of  the  enterprise. 

The  advantages  of  such  a  scheme  of  industrialized 
farming,  other  than  the  possible  profits  to  the  capitalist, 
are  twofold.  In  the  first  place  it  is  necessary  to  raise 
the  wages  of  the  agricultural  labourer.  Except  in 
certain  districts  he  is  the  worst  paid  workman  in  the 
country.  His  numbers  and  quality  have  been  steadily 
declining  through  emigration  and  the  competition  of 
better  paid  industries,  until  in  many  districts  only  a 
residuum  of  partially  capable  or  inefficient  men  are 
being  left  upon  the  land.  This  transference  to  other 
occupations  is  likely  to  be  accelerated  by  the  war  ;  men 
who  have  enlisted  and  have  thus  experienced  higher 
rates  of  pay,  who  have  also  once  been  uprooted  and 
violently  disturbed  in  their  routine  of  life,  will  at  least 
make  an  effort  not  to  go  back  to  the  old  conditions. 
Higher  wages  means  that  the  labourer  must  receive  a 
greater  share  of  the  returns  derived  from  farming,  and 
this  becomes  possible  upon  the  industrialized  farm  by 
the  fact  that  a  given  area  of  land  has  not  to  carry  so 
many  masters  and  admits  of  other  economies  in  work- 
ing. Whether  the  agricultural  labourer  can  ever  be  paid 
wages  equivalent  to  those  prevailing  in  other  industries 
for  men  of  no  greater  skill  must  depend  on  the  extent  to 
which  the  labourer  can  be  rendered  more  efficient  and 
capable  of  a  larger  output.  This  is  most  likely  to  occur 
on  a  large  farm  where  organization,  contract  work, 
and  the  use  of  machinery  can  be  given  full  play. 


OPENINGS  FOR  TRAINED  MEN  49 

Ultimately  the  wages  that  can  be  paid  must  be  limited 
by  the  prices  of  agricultural  produce ;  but  whatever 
these  conditions  may  be  in  the  future,  it  is  on  the  large 
farm  that  production  will  be  cheapest.  The  agricultural 
industry  cannot  continue  to  depend  upon  the  existence 
of  a  wage  standard  much  below  that  attainable  else- 
where. It  is  not  to  the  national  interest  that  it  should 
do  so  ;  the  present  ignorance  and  lack  of  independence 
of  the  rural  labourer  arise  ultimately  from  his  poverty 
and  weaken  the  fibre  of  our  population. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  existence  of  a  graded  system  of 
managers  and  under-managers  upon  large  farms  would 
provide  openings  for  young  men  of  trained  intelligence 
but  without  capital.  Our  great  industries  and  commercial 
enterprises  are  staffed  by  such  men,  who  have  come  in 
at  the  bottom  and  proved  their  value.  One  reason  for 
the  decline  of  agriculture  in  Great  Britain  has  been  that 
it  has  been  deprived  of  men  of  this  type.  Few  men  with- 
out capital  of  their  own  can  make  a  start  in  farming, 
and  a  large  number  of  the  young  men  trained  in  our 
agricultural  colleges,  many  of  them  possessed  of 
capacity  out  of  the  common  but  who  have  no  family 
farm  to  go  back  to,  must  obtain  administrative  or 
teaching  posts  or  go  abroad  in  order  to  find  adequate 
employment.  The  agricultural  colleges  are  often 
reproached  because  of  the  small  proportion  of  their 
students  who  are  to  be  found  afterwards  engaged  in 
farming  ;  but  this  simply  arises  from  the  fact  that  the 
majority  of  their  students  are  not  sons  of  farmers  nor  do 
they  possess  any  capital  beyond  their  education,  and  the 
conditions  of  agriculture  prevailing  in  England  afford 
them  no  opportunity  of  entering  upon  a  business  career. 
No   industry  can   continue  to   prosper  unless  it   is 


50  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

continually  recruited  by  intelligence,  and  farming  has 
suffered  doubly  in  that  the  more  enterprising  sons  of 
farmers  have  been  tempted  away  by  the  greater  possi- 
bilities of  commerce  and  manufactures,  while  at  the 
same  time  the  business  has  been  closed  to  the  great  bulk 
of  the  community,  who  cannot  be  given  a  substantial 
sum  of  money  for  their  start  in  life.  In  France  or 
Germany  it  is  always  easy  to  find  for  the  management 
of  an  estate  or  agricultural  enterprise,  young  men  who 
have  added  to  a  scientific  training  an  apprenticeship  in 
a  similar  business  ;  such  men  are  rare  in  Great  Britain 
because  of  the  lack  of  opportunity  of  obtaining  practical 
training  in  a  subordinate  capacity. 

It  will  be  argued  that  agricultural  enterprises  of 
the  type  suggested  are  unlikely  to  be  successful, 
because  farming  is  a  business  that  cannot  be  reduced 
to  a  system,  as  is  demonstrated  by  the  almost  universal 
failure  of  rich  men  and  corporations  who  take  it  up 
under  the  management  of  paid  servants.  Farming,  it 
is  argued,  is  a  personal  business,  dependent  primarily 
on  the  acumen  and  determination  of  the  farmer  in  his 
buying  or  selling — qualities  that  are  only  developed  by 
men  working  for  their  own  pockets.  So  much  is  the 
business  affected  by  these  personal  factors,  so  little  is  it 
determined  by  mere  knowledge  or  organizing  ability, 
that  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to  treat  it  industrially ;  better 
leave  it  to  the  enterprise  of  a  number  of  individuals 
working  independently,  some  at  least  of  whom  will 
manage  to  make  a  living.  Such  a  view,  which  is 
only  another  manifestation'"of  that  disbehef  in  the 
value  of  intelligence  to  which  EngHshmen  are  prone, 
is  no  more  true  of  farming  than  of  any  other  business. 
The  alleged  failures  have  been  conspicuous  enough 


DEMONSTRATIONS  BY  THE  STATE       51 

and  might  have  been  predicted  beforehand.  How  often 
has  one  seen  men,  otherwise  possessed  of  sound  com- 
mercial instincts,  put  a  farming  business  in  which  they 
have  invested  £5,000  or  so  under  the  control  of  a  bailiff 
at  £2  a  week.  Or,  if  a  gentleman  has  been  selected 
for  the  management,  his  qualifications  have  generally 
been  negative  rather  than  positive,  an  incapacity  to 
make  a  start  in  other  walks  of  life  instead  of  a  thorough 
apprenticeship  to  the  knowledge  and  business  of  agri- 
culture. It  is  true  that  managers  of  the  right  type  are 
rare  here,  for  reasons  set  out  above  ;  but  some  can  be 
found  and  others  can  be  trained,  for  the  material 
exists.  Farming  is  not  a  mystery  open  only  to 
those  born  within  the  craft ;  it  is  just  as  susceptible 
of  exact  knowledge  and  hard  business  treatment  as  any 
other  industry.  If  we  are  to  believe  that  agriculture  is 
outside  the  scope  of  British  intelligence  and  organiza- 
tion, the  sooner  we  put  up  the  national  shutters  the 
better,  for  that  kind  of  mental  dry  rot  will  not  be 
confined  to  agriculture.  Now  is  the  time  for  experi- 
ment, when  the  close  of  the  war  provides  the  oppor- 
tunity for  the  regeneration  of  all  our  industries  on  a 
basis  of  brains. 

It  is  not  suggested  that  the  industrialized  large  farm 
outlined  above  can  become,  either  by  natural  growth  or 
by  legislative  action,  the  normal  type  of  British  farming 
within  the  near  future.  It  does,  however,  so  manifestly 
represent  the  direction  the  development  of  the  land  of 
the  country  should  take,  both  in  the  interests  of  agri- 
culture and  of  the  nation  as  a  whole,  that  the  State 
ought  to  institute  one  or  two  examples  in  order  to 
demonstrate  the  possibilities  attached  to  farming 
on    this    scale.      If    these    experiments    proved    as 


52  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

successful  as  may  be  anticipated,  further  developments 
along  the  same  lines  would  rapidly  follow.  The  State 
itself  in  the  widest  sense,  including  the  Crown,  the 
Ecclesiastical  Commissioners,  the  Universities  and  the 
Colleges,  is  already  by  far  the  largest  landowner  in  the 
country  and  should  set  the  example  of  the  most 
economic  utilization  of  the  land.  The  great  landowners, 
a  class  that  has  always  recognized  their  duty  of  leader- 
ship and  their  obligations  to  the  community,  would  not 
be  backward  once  it  was  proved  that  both  the  interests 
of  the  nation  and  their  own  profit  were  assured  by  a 
new  method  of  dealing  with  their  land.  Even  if  they 
were  unable  to  provide  the  capital  necessary  for  the 
enterprise,  the  demonstration  of  the  profits  attain- 
able would  be  sufficient  to  attract  the  joint  stock 
company  to  undertake  farming  as  it  does  any  other 
business  that  has  been  systematized.  The  British 
capital  that  has  gone  in  the  past  to  finance  gold 
mines,  railways,  even  land  companies  in  other  coun- 
tries, could  find  just  as  profitable  an  outlet  in  the 
development  of  British  land  if  once  the  tradition  of  the 
insecurity  and  the  personal  character  of  the  business 
can  be  broken  down.  Meantime  the  demonstration 
farms  proposed  for  establishment  by  the  State  would 
provide  a  training-ground  for  the  skilled  managers  who 
would  be  wanted. 

2.  Small-holding  Colonies 

A  second  method  of  securing  a  larger  population 
resident  upon  the  land  and  more  intensive  cultiva- 
tion consists  in  the  establishment  of  small  holdings  held 
under  the  State  or  County  Councils  on  a  perpetual 
leasehold  or  such  terms  of  amortization  as  will  eventu- 


VALUE  OF  SMALL  HOLDINGS  53 

ally  render  the  occupier  the  owner  of  his  holding. 
Certain  progress  has  already  been  made  in  this  direc- 
tion under  the  Small  Holdings  Acts  ;  in  many  parts  of 
the  country  there  was,  prior  to  the  war,  a  considerable 
demand  for  land,  and  it  is  generally  held  that  this 
demand  will  be  increased  when  the  troops  are  demobi- 
lized, and  that  the  extension  of  the  process  of  setting 
up  such  small  holdings  will  go  far  to  bring  about  an 
intensification  of  British  agriculture.  The  question  of 
leasehold  or  ultimate  ownership  does  not  appear  to 
weigh  much  with  the  actual  small  holder,  provided  he 
is  assured  of  security  of  tenure.  He  is  mainly  concerned 
with  getting  as  low  a  rent  as  possible  and  wants  to 
have  the  whole  of  his  available  capital  free  for  his 
business.  Various  arguments  of  a  political  nature  may 
be  urged  for  and  against  ownership.  Experience  would 
seem  to  show  that  the  small  owner  is  always  tempted  to 
mortgage  his  land,  and  that  when  a  cycle  of  bad  times 
occurs  the  small  holdings  get  sold  and  thrown  together. 
The  advantages  of  a  small-holding  system  are  perhaps 
more  social  than  agricultural : 

(i)  They  meet  the  requirements  of  men  of  a  certain 
type  with  a  considerable  strain  of  independence  and 
self-reliance  in  their  temperament,  who  perhaps  work 
badly  or  irregularly  under  orders. 

(2)  They  provide  a  starting  point  for  agricultural 
workers  who  begin  at  the  bottom,  but  have  the  capa- 
city for  rising. 

(3)  They  call  out  great  reserves  of  hard  work  and 
ingenuity  in  their  occupiers,  and  so  give  rise  to  a  class 
of  men  of  value  to  the  State  because  of  their  capacity 
for  continuous  labour  and  their  independence.   Their 


54  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

children,  too,  are  early  broken  to  hard  work  and  are 
bred  up  without  the  temptations  to  the  dissipation 
of  energy  which  beset  a  town  dweller. 

(4)  The  setting  up  of  small  holdings  generally  brings 
about  an  intensification  of  the  farming  of  the  land  on 
which  they  are  situated.  In  order  to  live  at  all  the 
occupier  of  10  or  20  acres  cannot  be  content  with  the 
return  per  acre  satisfactory  to  the  large  farmer  ;  the 
small  holder  must,  therefore,  break  up  grass  land  and 
cultivate  it  as  a  market  garden  ;  if  he  is  producing 
milk  he  must  stock  his  land  heavily  and  buy  food 
from  outside. 

On   the   other  hand,  the  disadvantages  of  small 
holdings  may  be  summed  up  as  follows : 

(i)  The  independence  of  the  small  holder  is  often 
purchased  dearly  at  the  cost  of  the  excessive  labour 
of  the  occupier  and  the  "  sweating  "  of  his  family. 

(2)  There  are  many  losses  and  failures,  both  at 
starting  and  when  a  series  of  bad  years  occur. 

(3)  In  themselves,  small  holdings  are  necessarily 
uneconomical  units  for  dealing  with  land.  Most 
farming  operations  become  much  cheaper  when 
carried  out  on  a  wide  scale  ;  the  use  of  machinery  is 
only  profitable  on  large  fields  and  when  the  machine 
can  be  given  a  full  measure  of  work  in  proportion  to 
its  cost.  The  large  farmer  is  more  likely  to  apply 
science  and  bring  knowledge  to  his  business ;  the 
small  holder  must  be  conservative  in  his  methods, 
and  generally  becomes  very  unprogressive.  Though 
the  personal  attention  that  the  small  holder  can  give 
to  details  may  be  supposed  to  be  of  special  value  in 
the  handling  of  milch  cows,  the  management  of  fruit, 


DISADVANTAGES  OF  SMALL  HOLDINGS    55 

etc.,  in  practice  the  organization  at  the  command  of 
the  farmer  on  a  large  scale  secures  an  equal  or  a  better 
result.  It  is  true  to  say  that  in  districts  where  in- 
tensive cultivation  is  practised  by  both  small  and 
large  occupiers,  the  actual  cultivation  is  better,  the 
gross  production  and  the  net  profits  are  larger  upon 
the  holdings  of  50  to  100  acres  than  upon  those  of 
from  5  to  20  acres.  In  fact,  the  really  good  small 
holder  soon  gets  possession  of  a  larger  acreage,  and 
ceases  to  be  a  small  holder. 

(4)  It  follows  that  small  holdings  are  only  likely  to 
answer  for  such  forms  of  agriculture  as  produce  a 
large  gross  return  per  acre,  and  when  the  proportion 
that  manual  labour  bears  to  the  other  costs  of  pro- 
duction is  high.  This  almost  confines  successful  small 
holding  to  the  production  of  vegetables,  fruit,  and 
flowers ;  as  regards  the  production  of  meat  and  com, 
and  to  some  extent  of  milk,  the  small  holder  cannot 
compete  with  the  large.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the 
market  for  fruit  and  vegetables  is  capable  of  consider- 
able expansion ;  it  is  indeed  probable  that  after  the 
war  it  will  shrink  with  the  general  poverty  of  the 
nation  and  only  extend  again  slowly.  Akin  to  this 
restriction  is  the  fact  that  small  holdings  only  answer 
on  good  land,  or  at  any  rate  on  light  land  that  is 
responsive  to  fertilizers  and  easily  worked.  They 
must  also  have  good  access  to  markets.  Many  large 
areas  in  the  kingdom — the  chalk  uplands,  the  clays 
of  the  Midland  counties,  can  be  profitably  farmed  on 
a  large  scale  but  cannot  produce  rapidly  enough  to 
satisfy  a  small  holder. 

(5)  The  small  holder,  with  his  limited  capital,  is  at 


56  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

a  disadvantage  both  in  buying  and  selling.  When 
buying  he  only  requires  small  quantities  of  materials 
like  fertilizers  and  feeding  stuffs  ;  he  is  confined  to 
the  local  market,  freight  charges  are  increased,  and 
he  finds  it  more  difficult  to  insure  himself  against 
inferior  quality  or  fraud.  His  difficulties  are  in- 
creased in  selling  ;  as  he  cannot  grade  his  produce  or 
turn  out  a  large  bulk  of  uniform  quality  he  falls  into 
the  hands  of  dealers  and  middlemen  ;  he  has  to  pay 
excessive  freight  charges  on  small  lots ;  he  finds 
particular  difficulties  in  disposing  of  the  inevitable 
surplus  of  inferior  quality.  The  small  holder  is  most 
successful  when  he  can  work  up  a  private  connection 
and  use  his  own  labour  to  deliver,  as,  for  example, 
when  he  establishes  a  milk  round  in  some  neighbour- 
ing town  ;  but  obviously  this  method  of  disposal  of 
produce  is  only  open  to  the  minority. 

It  is,  however,  very  generally  maintained  that  these 
disadvantages  of  the  small  holding  system  can  be 
largely  if  not  entirely  removed  by  the  adoption  of 
co-operative  principles  both  for  cultivation  and  trade, 
^o  that  the  whole  area  of  a  small-holding  colony 
would  become  a  single  economic  unit,  combining  the 
advantages  of  wholesale  management  with  the  indi- 
vidualism and  hard  work  fostered  by  separate  owner- 
ship. In  practice  we  do  not  find  that  the  principle  of 
co-operation  has  obtained  any  firm  grip  in  small- 
holding districts,  particularly  in  those  of  any  standing. 
Nevertheless,  a  small-holding  colony  should  be  pro- 
vided with  the  framework  of  a  co-operative  organiza- 
tion at  the  time  of  its  settlement,  so  that  from  the 
outset  the  occupiers  may  be  led  to  work  as  units  of  a 


THE  CO-OPERATIVE  COLONY  57 

collective  enterprise  under  the  guidance  of  an  expert 
adviser  who  would  instruct  the  occupiers  as  to  the  crops 
they  could  grow  most  advantageously  and  the  methods 
of  cultivation  to  adopt.  The  society  would  own  the 
necessary  machinery  and  horse  labour,  and  the  adviser 
would  organize  the  rota  on  which  it  circulated  ;  plough- 
ing, cultivating,  and  all  operations  involving  power  or 
machinery  would  thus  be  carried  out  by  the  society  at 
cost,  leaving  to  the  occupier  the  processes  involving 
manual  labour  only.  The  occupier  would  purchase  all 
his  necessaries — manures,  seeds,  tools,  etc.,  through  the 
central  depot  at  wholesale  rates  plus  the  expenses  of 
management ;  he  would  bring  his  produce  to  the  depot, 
where  it  would  be  graded,  properly  packed,  and  sold  in 
bulk.  The  depot  for  a  fruit  and  vegetable  producing 
colony  would  thus  involve  a  packing  and  grading  station 
and  an  installation  for  pulping,  canning,  drying,  and 
other  processes  for  dealing  with  gluts  and  utilizing  in- 
ferior produce.  For  a  colony  of  stock  farmers  the  depot 
might  take  the  form  of  a  cheese  factory  or  creamery, 
an  egg- collecting  station,  etc.  ;  it  would  also  own  and 
control  the  necessary  sires  of  high  quahty.  On  a  larger 
scale  the  slaughter  of  cattle  and  the  sale  of  meat,  the 
manufacture  of  bacon,  etc.,  might  be  undertaken  co- 
operatively ;  but  in  the  early  stages  at  any  rate  it 
would  seem  desirable  not  to  undertake  these  very 
special  commercial  enterprises,  which  are  not  in  essence 
the  business  of  the  producer.  Until  the  co-operative 
society  is  very  strong  both  in  its  organization  and  its 
finance  it  should  confine  its  operations  to  securing  a 
standardized  production  and  sale  on  wholesale  terms. 
The  business  of  co-operation  is  not  to  get  rid  of  the 
distributors,  dependent  manufacturers  or  middlemen, 


58  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

but  to  ensure  that  they  are  only  remunerated  for  the 
services  they  render  and  do  not  also  capture  the  profits 
of  production,  as  they  do  when  the  producers  are  un- 
organized and  can  be  induced  to  compete  with  their 
fellows  to  bring  down  prices.  At  present  the  producer 
is  often  allowed  only  a  bare  living  wage ;  the 
middleman  engrosses  all  the  margin  of  profit.  By 
co-operation  the  situation  can  be  equalized,  if  not 
reversed. 

The  conception  of  a  co-operative  colony  of  small 
farmers  is  certainly  attractive,  and  in  its  elements  is  to 
be  found  at  work  in  numerous  agricultural  co-operative 
enterprises  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  But  no  com- 
plete colony,  organized  for  cultivation,  buying  and 
selling,  has  yet  been  realized ;  there  is  this  great  in- 
herent difficulty  in  its  foundation,  that  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  men  who  make  the  best  small  holders — one 
of  independence  and  self-reliance — is  averse  to  the 
discipline  and  subordination  involved  in  co-operative 
working.  It  must  be  remembered  also  that  the  co- 
operative society  is  itself  a  middleman  like  any  other, 
and  that  the  organization  for  advice  and  management 
is  a  charge  upon  the  enterprise  as  costly  if  not  more  so 
than  the  parallel  organization  upon  a  large  farm.  Com- 
pared with  the  industrialized  farm  the  small-holding 
colony  will  be  a  less  efficient  and  more  expensive  pro- 
ducer ;  it  is  also  indifferently  adapted  to  farming  for 
wheat  and  the  other  staple  crops,  and  to  the  breed- 
ing and  fattening  of  cattle  and  sheep.  The  estabhsh- 
ment  of  a  colony  of  small  holders  would  also  require 
more  capital  than  would  be  wanted  for  an  industrialized 
farm  of  the  same  area  and  giving  employment  to  the 
same  number  of  men,  because  of  the  extra  cost  of 


THE  CO-OPERATIVE  COLONY  59 

buildings,  fencing,  roads,  etc.,  necessitated  by  the  multi- 
plicity of  holdings. 

Nevertheless,  as  small  holdings  are  justified  by  their 
social  advantages,  as  they  respond  to  certain  real  if  not 
universal  factors  in  human  nature,  the  State  may  be 
expected  after  the  war  to  continue  and  extend  its  former 
policy  of  promoting  their  creation  and  financing  their 
establishment  out  of  public  funds.  Having  gone  so  far 
and  because  the  security  for  its  loans  depends  upon  the 
prosperity  of  the  holders,  the  State  should  even  in  its 
own  interest  go  a  stage  further  and  divide  up  no  estate 
into  small  holdings  without  at  the  same  time  setting 
up  an  organization  for  co-operative  working,  which 
alone  can  enable  the  small  farmer  to  compete  with  the 
large  producer. 

The  setting  up  of  the  machinery  for  sale  and  purchase 
and  for  technical  guidance  should  precede  or  at  least 
be  contemporaneous  with  the  settlement  of  the  small 
holdings,  so  that  the  occupier  finds  it  in  being  when  he 
takes  up  his  land.    Otherwise  he  is  liable  to  waste  much 
of  his  small  capital  by  injudicious  purchases  before  he 
has  acquired  experience,  and  again  he  forms  trading 
connections  which  he  finds  difficult  to  break  when  at 
some  later  period  the  organization  of  a  co-operative 
society  is  attempted  in  his  district.     The  grip  of  the    i 
trader  who  has  given  credit  to  the  small  holder  or  farmer  / 
paralyses  his  already  limited  powers  of  buying  and  ( 
selling  to  advantage ;   one  of  the  functions  of  the  co-  ■ 
operative  societies  will  be  to  give  their  members  the 
legitimate  credits   they   may  require  in  a  form  less 
perilous  to  their  independence. 

If,  however,  the  co-operative  society  is  to  come  into 
existence  at  the  same  time  as  the  small  holdings,  it  will 


6o  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

have  to  be  organized  and  in  its  early  stages  financed  by 
some  outside  agency,  like  the  Agricultural  Organization 
Society,  to  whom  the  State  has  delegated  the  develop- 
ment of  co-operation,  the  cost  of  the  initial  stages  being 
treated  as  a  necessary  preliminary  expenditure  in  the 
establishment  of  the  colony,  like  road-making  or  fencing. 
This  procedure  may  involve  some  departure  from  the 
strict  principles  of  co-operation,  some  paternalism  ;  but 
the  start  is  all-important  and  new  tenants  are  rarely  in  a 
position  to  take  the  initiative.  After  all  the  State  has 
become  the  landlord,  and  the  landlord  has  duties  towards 
his  tenants  beyond  the  mere  receiving  of  rents. 

Organized  into  a  co-operative  framework,  small- 
holding colonies  can  become  important  agencies  in 
carrying  out  the  object  of  the  State — the  better  utiliza- 
tion of  the  resources  of  the  land,  both  in  the  way  of  the 
increased  production  of  food  and  the  support  of  a  larger 
rural  population.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  they  will 
ever  be  as  efficient  as  large  industrialized  farms  ;  but 
they  are  correlative  and  not  antagonistic  to  such  large 
farms.  They  have  certain  social  virtues  of  their  own 
and  respond  to  deep-seated  instincts  and  aspirations  in 
human  nature.  Above  all  they  provide  openings,  and 
by  their  help  new  men  get  a  footing  in  the  ranks  of  the 
farmers. 

3.  The  Intensification  of  Agriculture  under  the 
Current  System 

It  has  already  been  shown  that  the  productivity  of 
the  land  of  Great  Britain  as  a  whole  has  dechned  during 
the  last  forty  years,  as  a  result  of  the  great  depression 
consequent  on  the  fall  in  prices  towards  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century.    From  this  depression  the  industry 


RANCHING  IN  ENGLAND  6i 

had  only  very  partially  begun  to  recover  as  prices 
improved  in  the  period  immediately  prior  to  the  war, 
though  in  many  parts  of  the  country,  as,  for  example, 
among  the  Lincolnshire  potato  growers  and  the  market 
gardeners,  men  of  enterprise  are  to  be  found  who  are 
utilizing  the  advantages  derived  from  better  fertilizers, 
better  varieties,  and  improved  machinery  that  have 
accrued  during  the  last  generation,  men  who  have  in- 
creased the  capital  employed  in  their  businesses  and 
are  making  highly  efficient  use  of  their  land.  Neverthe- 
less, in  many  districts,  especially  on  the  poorer  soils,  the 
majority  of  the  holdings  are  under- farmed  and  under- 
capitalized, and  the  farmers  are  making  their  profits 
out  of  the  natural  capacity  of  the  soil  to  yield  some 
return  on  a  very  small  expenditure  of  labour.  Some 
very  bad  cases  of  what  we  may  term  the  exploitation 
of  the  soil,  as  distinct  from  farming,  can  be  found.  In 
one  case  one  man  obtained,  in  the  'eighties,  partly  by 
purchase  and  partly  by  hiring,  the  control  of  some 
8,600  acres,  which  has  ever  since  been  worked  as  a  vast 
sheep  farm.  On  the  portion  owned  the  whole  of  the 
land  has  been  laid  down  to  grass ;  the  cottages,  and 
in  many  cases  the  farmhouses  and  buildings,  have  been 
allowed  to  fall  into  ruin,  and  two  hamlets  have  been 
completely  depopulated.  Just  prior  to  the  war,  on  one 
property  consisting  formerly  of  five  farms  and  totalling 
1,360  acres,  two  men  only  were  regularly  employed, 
three  of  the  farm  houses  were  let  to  private  residents, 
two  were  left  empty.  On  another  group  of  1,500  acres 
four  men  were  regularly  employed  where  about  seventy 
once  found  work.  On  the  rented  farms,  where  a  certain 
proportion  of  arable  has  to  be  maintained,  it  was  esti- 
mated that  about  seventy  men  and  boys  remained 


62  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

instead  of  the  i6o  or  so  who  were  once  employed.  The 
land,  though  much  of  it  is  high  and  poor,  lies  on  the 
chalk,  and  is  all  susceptible  of  arable  cultivation.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  wholesale  loss  to 
the  community  that  has  been  brought  about  by  this 
deliberate  conversion  of  what  was  once  a  productive  and 
fairly  populated  area  into  a  sheep  ranch.  The  occupier, 
however,  has  found  his  profit  in  dispensing  with  labour, 
and,  as  things  are,  no  one  can  interfere  with  his  methods. 
Under  normal  conditions  it  might  have  been  hoped  that 
with  the  returning  prosperity  of  farming  the  various 
educational  agencies  that  have  been  set  up  during  the 
last  twenty  or  thirty  years — agricultural  colleges,  farm 
institutes,  institutes  for  research,  etc. — would  slowly, 
but  in  the  most  enduring  fashion,  effect  a  reform  in  the 
conduct  of  the  industry  and  bring  up  its  general  level 
more  nearly  to  that  of  the  practice  of  the  best  men. 
Withoui  doubt  the  attitude  of  the  leaders  of  agricultural 
opinion  towards  knowledge  and  investigation  have  been 
changing  very  greatly.  The  best  men  expect  assistance 
from  science,  and  keep  their  minds  open  to  apply  its 
teachings  and  to  reduce  to  practice  the  openings  it 
indicates.  Education  in  the  business  as  well  as  in  the 
science  of  farming  was  going  forward,  co-operative 
methods  were  making  headway  among  large  farmers 
as  well  as  small,  and  co-operation  in  itself  has  an 
educational  value.  Example,  education,  the  trend  of 
prices  were  alike  making  for  progress,  until  the  war 
introduced  a  fresh  feeling  of  insecurity.  Now,  even  the 
stimulus  of  high  prices  is  more  than  set  off  by  the 
difficulties  arising  out  of  the  lack  of  labour,  the  scarcity 
of  manures,  feeding  stuffs,  and  machinery,  the  con- 
gestion of  traffic,  etc. ;   cultivation  is  decHning,  good 


SECURITY  OF  TENURE  63 

men  are  leaving  their  farms,  and  the  question  remains  of 
what  steps  can  be  taken  to  ensure  that  after  the  war  the 
existing  occupiers  of  land  shall  set  about  better  methods 
and  face  the  risks  involved  in  a  more  intensive  use  of 
the  land. 

Should  the  schemes  that  have  already  been  outHned 
for  the  creation  of  large  industrialized  farms  and  small- 
holding colonies  develop  to  such  an  extent  that  they 
take  up  any  considerable  proportion  of  the  cultivable 
land  of  Great  Britain,  there  would  be  a  sensible  reaction 
upon  the  rest  of  the  land  in  the  direction  of  improved 
farming.  For  example,  if  one-half  of  a  large  estate  were 
to  be  withdrawn  in  order  to  establish  a  single  large 
farm,  either  room  for  the  displaced  tenants  must  be 
obtained  by  dividing  the  holdings  upon  the  rest  of  the 
land,  or  in  the  alternative  such  a  competition  would  be 
set  up  for  the  untouched  holdings  that  a  selection  could 
be  made  of  none  but  the  best  of  the  old  tenants,  and  a 
higher  standard  of  farming  could  be  ensured.  Thus  over 
the  country  as  a  whole  the  influx  of  new  tenants  and 
new  capital  that  is  postulated  by  either  the  large  in- 
dustrial farms  or  the  small-holding  colonies,  must 
promote  the  better  utilization  of  the  remaining  land, 
both  by  bringing  about  division  of  the  existing  under- 
capitaHzed  farms  and  the  concentration  of  more  capital 
and  effort  on  a  given  area,  and  by  the  more  stringent 
competition  that  would  be  set  up  for  the  remaining 
farms.  As  has  been  said  before,  landowners  have  often 
to  rest  content  with  indifferent  farming  on  the  part  of 
their  tenants,  because  they  cannot  be  sure  of  finding  any 
better  ones  ;  the  greater  the  competition  for  farms,  and 
the  higher  the  rents  the  owner  can  hold  out  for,  the  more 
intensive  must  be  the  farming  in  order  to  earn  the  rent 


64  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

out  of  the  land.  Of  course  the  statement  that  higher 
rents  make  for  better  farming  is  not  true  as  a  general 
proposition  ;  but  it  is  sound  to  say  that  a  condition  of 
no  competition  for  farms,  so  that  the  owner  has  to  take 
any  rentals  he  can  be  reasonably  sure  of,  is  generally 
accompanied  by  low  farming  and  restricted  enterprise 
on  the  part  of  the  tenants.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the 
mere  granting  of  security  of  tenure  to  the  sitting  tenant, 
taken  by  itself,  is  not  likely  to  further  the  improvement 
of  agriculture.  The  freedom  it  would  give  the  farmer 
to  develop  his  holding  and  embark  capital  on  new  ven- 
tures without  the  risk  of  having  his  rent  raised  or  his 
improvements  confiscated,  would  be  valuable  to  men  of 
enterprise,  especially  to  those  who  wish  to  take  up  fruit 
growing  and  market  gardening  ;  but  these  men  are  in 
a  minority,  and  the  majority,  who  are  making  what  they 
regard  as  a  sufficient  income  out  of  their  cheap  methods, 
will  be  confirmed  in  their  restricted  poHcies.  In  practice 
only  a  few  farmers,  anxious  to  develop,  find  themselves 
restricted  by  the  present  conditions  of  tenure;  the  real 
problem,  inherent  in  the  renting  system,  would  still 
remain  of  how  a  farmer  or  his  representatives  are  to 
realize  the  value  of  either  a  special  business  that  he  has 
built  up  or  the  general  improvement  on  a  holding  that 
he  has  brought  up  to  a  high  pitch  of  cultivation.  The 
burden  of  obtaining  a  purchaser  of  the  improvements 
w^ould  have  to  be  left  to  the  tenant,  for  the  owner  can 
hardly  be  called  upon  to  take  over  a  speculation  in 
which  he  has  not  participated  from  the  outset.  Security 
of  tenure  and  free  sale  of  improvements  are  without 
doubt  necessary  to  encourage  farmers  of  enterprise,  but 
they  must  be  accompanied  by  certain  safeguards  to 
ensure  that  the  land  is  made  full  use  of.    One  very  real 


THE  STATE  AS  FARMER  65 

objection  to  granting  security  of  tenure  now  without 
qualification  is  that  rents  are,  speaking  generally,  below 
their  true  economic  level  in  England.  Why  should  the 
tenant  be  presented  with  that  excess  of  the  real  over 
the  rental  value  of  the  land  which  is  not  being  realized, 
just  because  of  his  own  indifferent  farming  or  because 
the  owner  for  social  reasons  and  the  lack  of  competition 
is  not  in  a  position  to  enforce  a  more  adequate  develop- 
ment of  the  capabilities  of  the  land?  Apart  from 
temporary  fluctuations,  such  as  that  induced  by  the  fall 
in  prices  towards  the  end  of  last  century  or  the  changes 
the  war  may  bring,  land  in  Great  Britain  must  be  ex- 
pected to  rise  in  value  as  time  goes  on,  for  reasons 
beyond  the  control  of  either  owner  or  tenant.  Little  is 
to  be  gained  by  handing  over  this  unearned  increment 
from  the  present  owner  to  the  sitting  tenant ;  indeed, 
such  a  creation  of  a  dual  ownership  would  only  put 
new  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  resumption  of  this 
interest  by  the  State,  which  has  the  only  real  title  to  it. 
The  most  effective  lever  to  secure  the  better  farming 
that  is  now  needed  in  the  national  interest  would  be  to 
give  the  State  powers  to  take  over  any  land  that  is  being 
inadequately  used  ;  the  State  could  then  develop  this 
land  either  on  the  large  farm  system  or  by  settling  it 
with  small-holding  colonies.  In  this  way  pressure 
would  be  put  on  the  owners  of  land  to  make  the  most 
of  it,  pressure  arising  on  the  one  hand  from  increased 
competition  owing  to  displacement  and  on  the  other 
from  the  imphed  threat  of  dispossession  if  the  occupier 
is  allowed  to  farm  badly.  But  if  the  State  is  to  be 
given  power  to  take  over  land  that  is  not  being  fully 
utihzed,  it  must  also  be  prepared  to  farm  the  land 
itself  on  one  or  other  of  the  methods  indicated.    The 


66  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

justification  for  such  drastic  measures  is  the  critical 
situation  into  which  the  nation  has  drifted  and  the 
imperative  necessity  of  developing  the  production  of 
food  on  our  own  soil,  but  these  measures  cannot  be 
adopted  until  the  State  is  ready  to  manage  the  land 
itself. 

In  this  connection  there  is  an  urgent  call  for  the 
special  education  of  our  rising  generation  of  landowners. 
If  we  consider  the  land-owning  class  in  this  country 
from  any  broad  general  standpoint  we  must  recognize 
that  they  have  accepted  certain  public  obligations  as 
attached  to  their  receipt  of  rents.  They  have  endea- 
voured to  be  just  and  liberal  to  their  tenants ;  they 
have  not  pressed  for  the  full  measure  of  the  value  of  their 
land ;  they  have  given  freely  both  of  their  time  and 
their  resources  to  the  community.  The  one  thing  they 
have  lacked  has  been  technical  knowledge  ;  only  in  the 
direction  of  pedigree  stock-raising  have  they  advanced 
the  national  agriculture  ;  they  have  not  treated  land- 
owning as  a  career  nor  qualified  themselves  to  give  a 
lead  to  their  tenants.  Nor  have  their  agents  brought  a 
more  enlightened  outlook  to  their  profession  ;  the  best 
of  them  have  managed  the  business  of  rent  receiving, 
the  letting  of  farms,  the  carrying  out  of  the  owner's 
obligations  in  the  way  of  buildings  and  repairs,  carefully 
and  soundly.  They  have  acted  as  considerate  and  well- 
informed  intermediaries  between  the  owner  and  his 
tenants,  but  with  a  few  exceptions  they  have  not 
attempted  the  development  of  the  industry  upon  the 
land  under  their  charge.  They  have  taken  the  system 
as  they  found  it,  and  have  thought,  perhaps,  more  of 
the  ease  of  the  tenants  than  of  the  pockets  of  the 
owners.     But  this,   I  submit,  is  not  enough.     The 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  LANDOWNER   67 

landowner,  if  he  is  to  retain  his  position,  must  become 
the  leader  of  his  tenants  and  the  entrepreneur  of  his 
property.  His  very  kindness,  his  acceptance  of  non- 
economic  rents,  his  easiness  towards  unprogressive 
tenants  in  difficulties,  has  injured  rather  than  helped 
the  industry  as  a  whole.  The  root  of  the  evil  lies  in  the 
owner's  want  of  technical  knowledge  of  the  land ;  he 
leaves  school  and  university  without  any  education 
directed  towards  his  future  position,  with  a  certain 
inherited  sense  of  public  duty  but  with  no  means  of 
applying  it  to  his  immediate  powers  and  obHgations. 
It  is  true  that  there  are  now  Schools  of  Agriculture  both 
at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  but  as  yet  they  have  been 
but  little  utilized  by  the  land-owning  class.  At  both 
Universities  the  curriculum  is  primarily  based  upon 
science ;  the  schools  aim  mainly  at  training  agricul- 
tural experts  and  officials,  to  a  less  extent  practical 
farmers.  The  schools  enjoy  no  social  consideration  in 
the  Universities ;  the  course  of  instruction,  which  at 
the  outset  involves  a  considerable  measure  of  work  in 
the  laboratory,  is  somewhat  repellent  and  abstract 
to  the  student  whose  previous  upbringing  has  been 
literary  and  classical,  and  whose  sole  agricultural  asset 
is  some  personal  acquaintance  and  sympathy  with  the 
life  of  the  country-side.  If  he  came  up  from  school 
with  a  reasonable  knowledge  of  the  elements  of  chem- 
istry and  botany  his  entry  into  the  subject  would  be 
facilitated  ;  he  would,  as  it  were,  know  the  language  in 
which  his  technical  instruction  has  to  be  given.  But  the 
real  objection  to  the  current  types  of  education  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  working  landowner  need  neither  be  a 
man  of  science  nor  a  practical  farmer,  valuable  as  the 
knowledge  of  either  might  be  to  him  ;  he  has  to  become 


68  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

the  administrator  of  a  specialized  business,  and  should 
be  taught  how  such  a  business  is  susceptible  of  study 
and  exact  management.  His  education  should,  there- 
fore, be  based  upon  economics,  upon  law  and  social 
history  ;  he  should  be  shown  the  way  into  the  con- 
sideration of  markets  and  co-operation.  If  there  is  one 
technical  subject  he  should  be  made  familiar  with  it  is 
that  of  book-keeping,  because  of  the  power  it  gives  a 
director  to  review  the  progress  of  a  business  and  to 
obtain  exact  data  as  the  basis  for  action.  It  is  easy  to 
sneer  at  book-keeping  as  a  pettifogging  matter  of 
shillings  and  pence  unworthy  of  a  University,  but  it  is 
the  intellectual  basis  of  affairs,  as  fundamental  as  the 
principle  of  conservation  of  energy  in  science,  and  no 
sound  judgment  in  business  can  be  formed  without  it. 
'*  Things  are  what  they  are,  and  consequences  will  be 
what  they  will  be  ;  why,  then,  should  we  deceive  our- 
selves?" It  is  not  pretended  that  the  young  land- 
owner can  be  turned  out  of  the  University  equipped  for 
the  business  of  controlling  or  developing  a  great  estate  ; 
real  education  begins  after  the  University  ;  but  he  can 
be  given  the  broad  principles  of  action  ;  he  can  be  made 
acquainted  with  the  sources  of  information  and  awak- 
ened to  the  possibility  of  applying  exact  methods  to 
practical  life.  Let  no  one  pretend  that  it  would  be  a 
derogation  on  the  part  of  a  University  to  concern  itself 
with  education  of  this  type.  Those  who  are  acquainted 
with  the  travesty  of  intellectual  effort  that  is  repre- 
sented by  the  pass  schools  of  either  University,  or  even 
by  the  lower  classes  of  the  Honour  schools,  can  but 
view  with  equanimity  their  replacement  by  any  form 
of  instruction  that  will,  on  the  one  hand,  be  hkely  to 
kindle   some   mental   response   on   the   part    of   the 


AGRICULTURAL  EDUCATION  69 

recipient,  and  on  the  other  begin  to  quahfy  him  for  his 
position  in  the  State.  In  the  critical  years  of  the  next 
generation  the  landowners  of  this  country  and  the 
system  they  represent  must  expect  a  searching  and 
even  a  hostile  trial ;  it  is  for  the  Universities  to  en- 
hghten  them  on  the  opportunities  and  the  obUgations 
that  are  bound  up  with  the  possession  of  land. 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  the  country,  prior  to 
the  war,  was  being  provided  with  a  fairly  complete 
organization  of  agricultural  research  and  education. 
The  skeleton  of  the  system  existed,  though  in  many 
cases,  especially  in  the  purely  rural  counties  where  the 
education  is  most  needed,  the  local  authorities  were  slow 
to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunities  provided  for 
them.  What  is  needed  is  that  the  Board  of  Agriculture 
should  be  given  power  to  insist  that  a  backward 
authority  shall  bring  its  educational  work  up  to  a 
certain  standard.  The  Board  of  Education  possesses 
this  power  with  regard  to  the  provision  of  primary  and 
other  forms  of  technical  education  ;  the  Board  of 
Agriculture  can  only  advise  and  assist.  Grants-in-aid 
alone  are  not  sufficient  to  convince  the  farmer  who  sits 
on  County  Councils  of  the  value  of  education,  the 
county  rate  is  a  more  substantial  argument.  There 
would  seem  to  be  room  for  the  introduction  of  a  new 
type  of  instruction  in  business  methods  by  the  setting 
up  of  demonstration  farms  run  solely  for  profit,  but 
which  keep  a  strict  set  of  accounts  and  make  pubHc  the 
costs  and  results  of  every  part  of  their  work.  Such 
farms  are  particularly  needed  in  districts  where  it  is 
desirable  to  bring  about  a  change  in  the  current  routine 
of  farming,  for  example  where  men  are  dairying  upon 
grass  land,  but  where  better  results  can  be  obtained  by 


70  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

the  introduction  of  a  certain  amount  of  arable  cultiva- 
tion for  cattle  food.  In  such  circumstances  example 
will  have  more  effect  than  any  amount  of  lecturing. 

The  question  of  internal  transport,  again,  requires 
careful  examination  in  the  interests  of  better  farming. 
Though  preferential  rates  to  the  foreign  producer  are 
not  allowed,  without  doubt  they  do  exist  in  the  form  of 
combined  rail  and  steamship  rates  at  a  level  designed  to 
meet  the  competition  of  a  possible  purely  water-borne 
traffic.  Apart  from  these  actual  cases  of  preferential 
treatment  the  British  farmer  compared  with  similar 
producers  in  other  countries  is  heavily  handicapped  by 
high  internal  freights.  It  is  not  only  in  marketing  his 
produce  that  he  suffers,  but  the  cost  of  carriage  is  a 
serious  item  in  the  price  of  materials  like  Hme  and 
fertilizers ;  his  production  would  be  improved  if  he  could 
make  more  use  of  seed  corn,  seed  potatoes,  etc.,  from  a 
distance  ;  in  many  directions  the  high  railway  charges 
oppose  an  obstacle  to  the  introduction  of  improved 
methods. 

4.  The  Reclamation  of  Land 

The  area  of  land  under  cultivation  in  England  rose 
year  by  year  from  the  date  at  which  exact  records 
begin  up  to  1892  ;  since  then  it  has  declined  similarly 
year  by  year,  about  800,000  acres  in  all  having  been 
lost.  In  the  main  this  loss  represents  urban  encroach- 
ments which  have  no  longer  been  balanced  by  the 
bringing  into  cultivation  of  portions  of  the  margin  of 
waste  still  existing  in  the  country.  The  work  of  re- 
claiming, which  had  been  most  active  towards  the  middle 
of  the  last  century,  proceeded  in  two  ways :  occasion- 
ally, on  a  large  scale,  as  a  landlord's  enterprise  ;  more 


GERMAN  EXAMPLE  71 

generally  by  the  enterprise  of  the  tenant  farmers,  who, 
with  or  without  improving  leases,  gradually  drained 
and  cleaned  up  the  rough  land  adjacent  to  their 
holdings.  The  process  stopped  with  the  great  fall  in 
agricultural  prices  ;  the  cost  of  the  labour  to  clear  the 
land  ceased  to  be  repaid  by  the  value  of  its  produce, 
for  at  that  time  labour  was  the  main,  almost  the  only 
item  in  the  cost  of  reclamation.  In  Great  Britain  no 
new  factor  has  arisen  to  alter  the  situation.  In  Ger- 
many, however,  the  march  of  events  has  been  very 
different ;  the  cultivation  of  the  waste  lands — moor 
and  heath — has  been  taken  in  hand  in  increasing  areas 
year  by  year.  For  example,  in  the  small  province  of 
Oldenburg,  about  an  average  of  sixty  settlers  per  annum 
were  placed  on  reclaimed  land  between  1901  and  1910  ; 
but  the  numbers  rose  to  130  in  1910  and  166  in  191 1, 
each  colonist  possessing  some  20  to  25  acres  of  land  that 
had  been  added  to  the  cultivated  area.  So  convinced 
of  the  economic  soundness  of  the  process  had  the  State 
become  that  in  1913  the  Prussian  Diet  sanctioned  a 
loan  of  I J  millions  sterhng,  half  of  which  was  to  be 
devoted  to  State  schemes  of  reclamation,  £150,000  to 
drainage,  and  ;f 500, 000  was  to  be  used  in  subventions 
to  provincial  schemes  of  reclamation.  This  contrast 
between  the  action  of  the  two  countries  is  not  to  be 
accounted  for  simply  by  the  difference  in  fiscal  poHcies 
and  the  higher  prices  for  agricultural  produce  ruling  in 
Germany ;  it  is,  in  the  main,  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
Germans  had  studied  the  problem  and  were  employing 
modern  resources,  both  in  the  way  of  knowledge  and 
materials,  to  the  treatment  of  the  land.  The  same 
process  has  been  going  on  in  the  free  trade  countries  of 
Holland  and  Belgium.    In  Great  Britain  no  advance 


72  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

had  been  made  upon  the  methods  in  vogue  at  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  ;  when  a  piece  of 
the  waste  was  to  be  taken  in  the  land  was  drained 
where  necessary,  the  rough  vegetation  was  burnt  off, 
the  soil  broken  up,  the  only  treatment  other  than 
mechanical  being  a  dressing  of  lime.  Once  cleaned, 
the  land  was  put  under  the  ordinary  crops,  with,  as  a 
rule,  extremely  poor  results  for  many  years,  though 
eventually,  by  dint  of  perseverance  and  an  annual 
expenditure  that  was  in  the  aggregate  considerable, 
though  perhaps  not  large  in  any  one  year,  the  land 
accumulated  fertility  and  became  a  paying  proposition, 
like  the  little  farms  one  sees  everywhere  bitten  out  of 
the  waste  on  the  flanks  of  the  New  Forest,  on  the 
Bagshot  Heath  and  the  Surrey  wastes.  The  German 
land  reclaimers,  on  the  other  hand,  have  recognized  that 
the  natural  infertility  of  the  heaths  and  moors  is  in  the 
main  due  to  their  deficiency  in  mineral  salts- — lime, 
phosphoric  acid  and  potash — and  after  the  mechanical 
operations  of  drainage  and  clearing  had  been  effected 
they  set  themselves  to  remedy  this  deficiency  by  an 
initial  expenditure  on  fertilizers  that  would  appear  to 
a  farmer  enormous  for  such  land,  but  without  which 
even  a  moderate  crop  cannot  be  grown.  In  this  way 
the  land  at  once  becomes  capable  of  yielding  a  living 
return  for  the  labour  of  cultivation  ;  the  initial  outlay 
on  basic  slag  and  kainit  proves  to  be  much  less  costly 
than  the  recurring  losses  involved  in  growing  crops  with 
no  special  manuring  until  some  sort  of  fertility  is  built 
up.  Indeed,  in  many  cases  one  sees  that  the  existing 
farms  reclaimed  from  the  heaths  in  Great  Britain  are 
still  suffering  greatly  from  their  original  deficiencies  ; 
their  productivity  is  at  a  low  level  because,  even  after 


FAILURES   IN   LAND    RECLAMATION      73 

half  a  century  or  more  of  cultivation,  the  soil  is  still 
short  of  Hme,  phosphoric  acid,  potash — sometimes  of 
one  constituent,  sometimes  of  all  threp. 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  this  genera)  stSLlement : 
that  land  reclamation  as  practised  in  Great  Britain  has 
never  taken  into  account  the  chemical  constitution  of 
the  soil  and  its  possible  rectification  by  cheap  mineral 
fertihzers,  largely  because  the  process  was  already 
falling  into  disuse  by  the  time  these  fertilizers  became 
available,  and  because  few  landowners  have  had  suffi- 
cient confidence  in  the  situation  or  faith  in  science  to 
embark  capital  on  agricultural  enterprises  during  the 
last  thirty  years.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  such  accounts 
as  are  available  of  the  costs  of  land  reclamation  in  Eng- 
land afford  no  guidance  to  the  possibilities  that  are 
open.  They  sometimes  show  good  results  where  the 
land  was  initially  healthy  as  on  Lincoln  Heath,  or 
where  plentiful  supphes  of  town  refuse  were  available 
as  in  Cheshire,  Bedford,  or  parts  of  Surrey  ;  elsewhere 
they  have  been  unremunerative,  and  have  led  to  the 
widespread  tradition  that  the  most  ruinous  of  all  pro- 
ceedings is  to  try  to  turn  bad  land  into  good. 

Before  discussing  the  different  types  of  waste  land 
that  are  capable  of  reclamation  in  Great  Britain,  it  is, 
perhaps,  advisable  to  render  the  term  more  precise 
by  excluding  those  forms  of  improvement  that  may  be 
regarded  as  within  the  scope  of  a  tenant  holding  a  lease 
of  reasonable  duration.  Many  examples  of  rough  waste 
land  occur  that  can  be  profitably  brought  into  cultiva- 
tion by  ordinary  means — e.g.,  fields  of  clay  land  over- 
grown with  briers  and  brambles,  which  only  require 
clearing  and  draining,  with  a  dressing  of  basic  slag, 
to  convert  them  into  decent  grass  land.     The  term 

F 


74  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

"  reclamation  "  is  better  reserved  for  such  cases  as 
involve  a  preliminary  expenditure  of  capital  on  a  scale 
comparable  with  or  greater  than  the  initial  value  of  the 
land,  beginning  with  certain  defined  operations  which 
are  apart  from  the  ordinary  routine  of  cultivation. 
Reclamation  deals  with  land,  the  initial  value  of  which 
lies  between  £i  and  perhaps  £7  per  acre  as  an  upper 
limit,  and  the  outlay  before  the  land  can  be  let  for 
ordinary  farming  may  be  as  high  as  £j  an  acre,  irre- 
spective of  buildings  and  roads. 

In  Great  Britain  opportunities  for  reclamation  on  a 
reasonably  large  scale  are  to  be  found  as  follows  : 

(i)  Salt  marsh  and  slob  lands  under  water  at  high  tide. 
While  no  great  area  of  this  debatable  ground  exists, 
payable  areas  ripe  for  reclamation  are  to  be  found  in 
many  of  the  estuaries  of  our  rivers,  particularly  on  the 
East  Coast.  Round  the  Wash  the  process  has  always 
been  going  on,  and  could  now  be  resumed  with  advan- 
tage ;  other  areas  have  been  examined  in  the  Dee 
Estuary,  the  Firth  of  Forth,  Cromarty,  etc.  The 
process  is  well  understood  ;  it  consists  in  throwing  up 
a  wall  round  the  area,  embanking  any  streams  and  pro- 
viding them  with  outlets,  cutting  drainage  channels  and 
providing  them  with  sluices  to  discharge  at  low  water 
or  by  means  of  a  pumping  station.  In  the  Eastern 
Counties  experience  has  shown  that  it  is  rarely  wise  to 
embank  land  that  has  not  already  been  so  far  built  up 
by  natural  actions  as  to  have  acquired  a  green  cover- 
ing of  vegetation.  The  embankment  is  comparatively 
costly  in  labour  and  varies  with  the  size  and  shape  of 
the  area  ;  but  the  land  gained  is  nearly  always  of  high 
quality,  worth  from  £30  to  £^0  an  acre.  Perhaps  the 
chief  obstacle  to  the  prosecution  of  such  work  is  the 


AREAS  SUITABLE  FOR  RECLAMATION    75 

uncertain  nature  of  the  title  to  areas  of  this  kind.  In  the 
main  the  property  resides  in  the  frontager.  The  Crown 
possesses  certain  ill- defined  rights,  but  rarely  can  make 
use  of  them  except  to  deal  with  the  frontager,  the  more 
so  as  the  strip  to  be  reclaimed  is  often  only  accessible 
by  leave  of  the  frontager. 

(2)  Areas  of  blown  sand  adjoining  the  sea.  On  the 
coast  of  North  Wales  several  large  areas  of  this  kind 
are  to  be  found ;  next  the  sea  comes  a  line  of  dunes, 
behind  which  is  a  comparatively  level  stretch  covered 
with  rough  grass  and  rushes,  the  soil  being  almost  pure 
sand.  To  reclaim  these  areas  the  dunes  have  to  be 
fixed  by  planting  with  Austrian  and  maritime  pine, 
gorse,  elder,  marram  grass,  etc. ;  a  few  drainage  cuts  are 
often  necessary,  then  the  light  soil  is  readily  brought 
under  cultivation.  This  type  of  land  is  well  suited  for 
market  garden  cultivation,  both  by  its  ease  of  working 
and  proximity  to  the  sea,  provided  that  it  is  liberally 
supplied  with  phosphatic  and  potash  manures  at  the 
outset.  Some  of  these  areas  contain  a  certain  propor- 
tion of  strong  alluvial  soil  adapted  to  corn  growing  and 
akin  to  the  valuable  land  adj  oining  the  Wash  and  the 
Humber.  The  cost  of  the  preparation  of  the  land  for 
cultivation  is  low,  but  the  charge  to  be  met  depends  in 
each  case  upon  the  proportion  the  cultivable  area  bears 
to  that  of  the  dunes  requiring  fixing.  In  some  cases  too 
high  a  price  is  demanded  for  areas  of  this  kind  that  are 
capable  of  profitable  reclamation,  because  of  their 
possible  value  for  development  as  seaside  estates. 

In  character  intermediate  between  this  type  and  that 
previously  described  are  certain  areas  that  are  neither 
links  nor  slob  land.  In  one  case  there  exists  a  block  of 
about  six  square  miles  of  land  only  commanding  a 


76  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

few  pence  per  acre  for  rough  grazing,  that  is  in  part 
strong  alluvial  soil,  in  part  peaty  and  elsewhere  sandy,  a 
large  proportion  being  subject  to  flooding  at  high  spring 
tides.  The  work  required  is  embankment,  drainage, 
possibly  a  pumping  station,  and  special  manuring  on 
the  peaty  and  sandy  portions  of  the  area  ;  but  the  cost 
would  be  small  in  proportion  to  the  ultimate  value  of 
the  land  to  be  gained  for  cultivation. 

(3)  Heath.  In  England  there  exist  comparatively 
large  expanses  of  uncultivated  sandy  heath,  now 
covered  with  a  valueless  vegetation  of  heather  or 
bracken  and  worthless  grass.  Such  is  the  "  brek  "  land 
of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  other  heaths  further  south  in 
Suffolk,  land  upon  the  Bagshot  Sand  formation  and 
Lower  Greensand  in  Surrey,  Sussex  and  Hampshire, 
the  Dorset  heaths,  etc.  The  reclamation  of  this  type 
of  land  has  been  reduced  to  a  system  in  Germany.  After 
drainage  where  necessary,  the  clearing  of  shrubs  and 
bushes  and  levelling  of  any  mounds  or  banks,  the  surface 
is  pared  and  allowed  to  rot  for  a  winter,  or  if  a  meadow 
is  to  be  formed,  a  tilth  is  obtained  by  continued  cultiva- 
tion with  implements  of  the  disc  type.  At  the  same  time 
about  2  tons  per  acre  of  chalk  or  its  equivalent,  8  cwt. 
per  acre  of  kainit,  and  5  cwt.  of  basic  slag,  are  worked  in 
as  the  fundamental  preliminary  dressing,  these  quanti- 
ties being  increased  if  a  meadow  is  in  preparation.  For 
a  meadow  a  special  mixture  of  grass  and  clover  seeds 
are  sown  directly  on  to  the  shallow-worked  surface  with 
surprisingly  good  results.  For  the  arable  land  the  best 
preparation  is  to  grow  a  crop  of  lupins  the  first  year  and 
turn  that  in,  thus  increasing  the  stock  both  of  nitrogen 
and  humus,  and  binding  and  adding  to  the  water-holding 
capacity  of  the  soil.    Afterwards  the  land  will  grow  all 


THE  RECLAMATION  OF  HEATHS         77 

the  cereals,  especially  rye  and  oats;  potatoes,  carrots 
and  peas  give  good  crops,  and  lucerne  also  answers  well 
on  such  land.  Liberal  manuring  with  artificials  is 
required  in  the  early  years  ;  the  cost  is  made  up  by  the 
cheapness  of  cultivation.  In  Germany  as  much  as  £'] 
an  acre  has  been  paid  for  such  heath  land ;  the  reclaim- 
ing, including  the  ploughing  in  of  the  lupin  crop, 
costs  £5  to  £6  per  acre.  After  two  or  three  years'  culti- 
vation the  land  sells  at  £20  to  £^0  an  acre.  A  small 
experiment  is  in  progress  by  the  Development  Com- 
mission on  200  acres  of  land  of  this  class  in  Norfolk, 
formerly  let  as  a  rabbit  warren  ;  in  the  second  year  136 
acres  were  under  crop,  and  though  the  season  (1915)  was 
unfavourable,  they  yielded  per  acre  27J  bushels  of 
wheat,  28  bushels  of  oats,  17  bushels  of  peas,  and  65  cwt. 
of  potatoes  (crop  badly  hit  by  disease).  The  cropping  of 
136  acres  that  had  been  reclaimed  in  the  previous  year 
cost  in  1914-15,  £1,051 — the  receipts  are  estimated  at 
£1,330.  Despite  difficulties  with  regard  to  labour  and 
the  dearness  of  the  indispensable  potash  manures,  the 
reclamation  of  the  160  acres,  which  are  now  clear  and 
ready  for  ordinary  cropping,  has  not  cost  more  than  £5 
per  acre,  exclusive  of  management  and  administration, 
charges  for  which  have  been  heavy  on  so  small  an 
experimental  area.  It  may  be  estimated  that  land  of 
this  class,  having  initially  a  letting  value  of  2s.  to  3s.  an 
acre  (exclusive  of  sporting  rights),  may  be  given  a  letting 
value  of  15s.  per  acre  by  an  expenditure  on  reclaiming 
proper  of  about  £5  an  acre.  Buildings  have  also  to  be 
provided,  but  the  cost  is  low,  because  no  horned  stock 
has  to  be  provided  for,  and  may  be  set  at  about  £5  per 
acre  (reckoning  half  the  cost  of  cottages  to  be  covered 
by  their  rent).    The  reclamation  of  this  type  of  land 


7^  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

would,  therefore,  just  pay  its  way  ;  but  the  land  im- 
proves with  cultivation,  so  that  in  twenty  years'  time 
it  would  be  worth  a  further  5s.  or  so  per  acre.  In  many 
cases  there  are  obstacles  to  the  acquisition  of  land  of 
this  type  in  the  existence  of  common  rights,  often  of 
the  smallest  value  to  the  commoners,  and  in  the  Eastern 
Counties  in  the  high  value  attached  to  the  land  for 
sporting  purposes. 

(4)  Low-lying  moor  and  bog.  A  few  areas  exist  in  this 
country  where  the  land  is  water-logged  and  is  covered 
by  a  thick  accumulation  of  peat.  Such  are  the  carrs 
and  moors  near  the  mouth  of  the  Trent,  and  a  few 
inland  areas.  The  reclamation  of  land  of  this  type  has 
been  very  thoroughly  studied  in  Holland  and  Germany, 
and  in  Friesland  and  North  Germany  flourishing  colonies 
of  small  arable  farmers  may  be  seen  on  such  moors  that 
formerly  carried  only  a  crop  of  rough  grass.  As  the 
reclamation  depends  upon  thorough  drainage  the  scheme 
has  to  be  a  comparatively  large  one  in  order  to  deal  with 
all  the  sources  of  incoming  water  or  to  straighten  and 
deepen  the  river  channel  so  as  to  lower  the  water  level 
on  the  drowned  land.  When  the  surface  is  dry  the 
deficiencies  in  phosphoric  acid  and  potash,  and  often  in 
lime,  have  to  be  repaired  as  on  the  heaih  land  ;  but  the 
accumulated  vegetation  provides  a  great  asset  in  the 
shape  of  nitrogen,  which  becomes  available  when  the 
mineral  salts  are  supplied,  so  that  the  reclaimed  lands 
carry  good  crops.  Sometimes  it  is  remunerative  to 
remove  the  lower  layers  of  peat  for  fuel,  and  it  is  often 
desirable  to  bring  a  layer  of  earth  or  sand  to  the 
surface.  The  cost  varies  with  each  scheme,  according 
to  the  extent  of  drainage  required,  the  value  of  the 
peat,  the  proximity  of  mineral  soil,  etc. ;  but  areas  of 


MOORS  AND  SHEEP  WALKS  79 

this  type  are  regarded  in  Germany  as  the  most  profit- 
able of  all. 

To  what  extent  similar  processes  can  be  extended  to 
the  higher-lying  peat  and  bog  areas  in  places  like 
Dartmoor,  parts  of  Wales,  the  North  of  England  and 
the  Highlands  is  doubtful,  because  the  climatic  con- 
ditions are  often  too  severe  to  permit  of  profitable  crops 
to  be  grown.  For  the  present,  at  any  rate  until  more 
experience  has  accumulated,  it  would  not  be  wise  to 
touch  land  of  this  kind  except  by  way  of  experiment  on 
selected  favourable  areas,  as,  for  example,  on  some  of 
the  cut-over  bogs  in  Ireland. 

(5)  Upland  sheep  walk.  In  many  parts  of  the 
country,  notably  in  Mid  Wales  and  the  Lowlands  of 
Scotland,  lie  extensive  tracts  of  grassy  uplands  which 
have  never  been  improved  in  any  way,  and  are  held  as 
farms  of  1,000  acres  and  upwards  for  breeding  sheep 
which  are  sold  away  and  fattened  on  the  lowlands.  In 
Mid  Wales  many  thousands  of  acres  of  land  of  this 
type  are  let  at  rentals  of  about  is.  per  acre.  They 
possess  a  fair  mineral  soil,  though,  as  a  rule,  deficient  in 
lime  ;  the  herbage  is  rough  and  poor,  but  consists  in 
the  main  of  grass ;  boggy  patches  occur  in  which  peat 
has  accumulated.  Being  purely  grass  land,  game  are 
scanty,  and  the  sporting  rights  of  little  value  ;  on  the 
other  hand  certain  commoners'  rights  often  exist, 
though  there  are  few  commoners  to  exercise  them. 
From  the  evidence  afforded  by  neighbouring  farms  it  is 
certain  that  this  land  is  capable  of  profitable  develop- 
ment, and  that  much  of  it  is  cultivable  when  the  situa- 
tion is  not  too  exposed  nor  the  slopes  too  steep.  The 
difficulty  of  communication  has  been  the  main  reason 
why  the  land  has  not  been  divided  into  smaller  farms 


8o  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

and  improved.  The  work  of  reclamation  would  begin 
with  the  construction  of  roads.  The  better  land  by  the 
stream  courses  would  be  prepared  for  arable  cultiva- 
tion by  drainage  and  the  use  of  basic  slag  and  lime  ;  the 
steep  slopes  would  be  best  utilized  for  forestry  ;  while 
the  higher  land  would  be  still  left  as  sheep  walks,  to  be 
improved  by  the  occupier  as  time  went  on.  After  the 
preUminary  operations,  what  would  be  aimed  at  would 
be  the  creation  of  small  farms  of  150  acres  or  so  of  the 
better  land,  20  to  30  acres  of  which  would  be  under  the 
plough  and  the  rest  improved  grass,  while  to  each  farm 
would  be  attached  a  stretch  of  sheep  walk  above  the 
forest.  The  forestry  and  the  farming  would  react 
favourably  on  one  another,  as  the  forest  would  provide 
for  the  occupiers  of  the  farms  winter  occupation  in 
planting  and  maintenance,  the  labour  for  which  would 
be  otherwise  unobtainable  in  those  districts.  The  rela- 
tive proportion  the  forests  would  bear  to  the  farms 
would  depend  upon  the  configuration  and  elevation  of 
each  district.  It  is  not  possible  to  frame  any  general 
estimate  of  the  expenditure  and  returns  for  reclamation 
of  this  kind,  but  as  the  rentals  run  as  high  as  12s.  an 
acre  for  farms  in  Wales  on  precisely  the  same  class  of 
land,  and  at  similar  elevations  as  that  which,  in  its 
unimproved  state,  only  commands  is.  to  is.  6d.  per 
acre,  and  the  buildings  and  fences  cannot  be  set  at  more 
than  £4  an  acre  on  the  existing  farms,  there  is  a  con- 
siderable margin  for  expenditure.  The  cost  of  the  roads 
should  not  be  wholly  debited  to  the  reclamation,  as  they 
will  to  a  large  extent  be  paid  for  in  the  increasing  rating 
of  the  area.  None  but  schemes  on  a  large  scale,  how- 
ever, offer  prospects  of  ultimate  success,  and  some  time 
would  elapse  before  they  became  paying  propositions. 


TEMPORARY  OUTLET  FOR  LABOUR  8i 

It  may  be  estimated  that  the  gross  expenditure  on  the 
reclaimed  land  (regarding  the  afforested  portions  as  a 
separate  enterprise)  would  be  £8  to  £io  an  acre  before 
the  farms  could  be  let,  and  for  the  first  year  or  two  the 
rents  would  have  to  be  kept  low,  not  rising  to  the  normal 
for  at  least  five  years.  But  supposing  that  half  the  land 
has  to  be  put  in  forest,  it  would  ultimately  carry  a 
family  per  300  acres,  where  it  now  only  carries  a  family 
per  1,500  acres. 

One  aspect  of  reclamation  work  that  has  not  hitherto 
been  considered  is  that  it  would  afford  a  considerable 
volume  of  employment  for  large  gangs  of  unskilled 
labour  during  the  preliminary  period  of  actual  reclama- 
tion. Most  of  the  work  that  requires  to  be  done — 
embankment,  drainage,  levelling,  clearing,  etc.,  road- 
making  and  even  building — could  be  done  under  direc- 
tion by  able-bodied  men  with  no  previous  experience  of 
the  land.  For  example,  regiments  awaiting  discharge 
could  well  undertake  such  work  on  a  prepared  scheme 
with  a  small  amount  of  technical  direction,  the  huts 
that  have  been  erected  in  so  many  camps  about  the 
country  being  moved  to  supply  the  necessary  housing. 
As  the  work  progressed  and  became  more  definitely 
agricultural,  the  men  with  a  desire  to  remain  in  the 
country  and  some  aptitude  for  farming,  could  be 
selected  to  become  the  occupiers  of  the  holdings  that 
had  been  prepared  for  farming,  and  since  the  occupiers 
would  form  definite  colonies  it  would  be  easy  to  provide 
some  technical  guidance  in  the  earlier  years. 

In  conclusion,  it  should  be  said  that  the  full  value  of 
reclamation  schemes  is  only  apparent  after  the  lapse 
of  time,  for  the  true  capacity  of  the  land  is  only  attained 
after  years  of  cultivation,  and  the  best  uses  to  which  it 


82  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

can  be  put  in  any  district  are  only  learnt  by  experience. 
Many  of  the  advantages  also  are  indirect ;  the  land 
won  is  sheer  gain  to  the  cultivated  area,  no  previously 
existing  labour  is  displaced,  and  the  increased  popula- 
tion provided  for,  as  well  as  the  absolute  addition  to  the 
production  of  food,  enhance  the  wealth  of  the  nation 
both  by  the  commercial  exchanges  promoted  and  the 
new  contribution  of  rates  and  taxes. 

5.  Subsidiary  Agricultural  Industries 

One  of  the  evils  from  the  social  point  of  view  that  has 
overtaken  the  country-side  during  the  last  sixty  years 
has  been  the  gradual  decay  of  the  minor  industries 
depending  upon  agriculture.  The  corn  mills  and  the 
tanneries  have  largely  been  concentrated  in  the  ports 
and  the  towns  ;  the  wheelwrights  and  the  harness- 
makers  have  become  more  shopkeepers  than  manufac- 
turers ;  the  farriers  often  buy  their  shoes  ready  made  ; 
the  country  towns  and  villages  have  lost  their  old 
craftsmen.  To  some  extent  the  process  is  inevitable, 
and  has  been  due  to  the  normal  centralization  of  in- 
dustries and  the  comparative  efficiency  of  large  busi- 
nesses as  compared  with  small.  There  are,  however, 
sundry  definitely  agricultural  industries  which  can  most 
properly  be  conducted  in  close  proximity  to  the  land 
from  which  the  raw  material  is  derived,  but  which  have 
suffered  from  the  neglect  and  lack  of  enterprise  that 
have  overtaken  all  matters  agricultural  during  the  last 
half  century.  One  example  is  the  manufacture  of  beet 
sugar.  It  has  been  fully  demonstrated  that  sugar  beet 
of  quality  equal  to  the  best  continental  produce  can  be 
grown  in  England,  and  that  the  beet  sugar  crop  would 
find  a  place  profitable  to  the  farmer  in  the  systems  of 


SUGAR  BEET  83 

farming  in  vogue  in  several  parts  of  the  country.  It  has 
not  been  demonstrated — indeed,  it  cannot  be  demon- 
strated by  figures  which  do  not  represent  results — 
that  the  beet  sugar  industry  will  be  an  economic  success 
in  this  country  ;  nothing  but  an  actual  full  scale  trial 
can  settle  this  question,  yea  or  nay.  The  one  factory 
that  has  been  established  has  laboured  under  consider- 
able difficulties,  some  due  to  the  pioneer  character  of 
the  work,  others  to  the  foreign  direction  and  the  result- 
ing unfamiliarity  with  English  farming  conditions.  The 
factory  is  still  at  work,  but  for  these  and  other  reasons 
the  men  who  are  best  qualified  to  judge  do  not  consider 
that  even  a  failure  of  this  enterprise  could  be  taken  as 
finally  demonstrating  that  the  manufacture  of  beet 
sugar  must  be  unprofitable  in  England.  Losses  must 
be  expected  in  the  early  stages  of  a  specialized  new 
industry  of  this  kind ;  if  for  no  other  reason,  because 
of  the  time  and  cost  required  to  educate  the  farmers  on 
whom  the  supply  of  raw  material  is  dependent.  But 
having  regard  to  the  importance  of  producing  a  part  of 
our  imports  of  sugar  and  the  valuable  element  that  the 
beet  crop  has  proved  to  be  in  the  agriculture  of  other 
countries,  there  is  every  justification  for  an  experiment 
on  such  a  scale  and  with  such  a  reserve  of  capital  as  will 
give  the  industry  a  thorough  working  trial  after  the 
initial  difficulties  have  been  overcome.  There  are  other 
possible  rural  industries  with  regard  to  which  a  prima 
facie  case  can  be  made  out  for  a  trial  on  a  commercial 
scale,  a  trial  that  will  be  experimental  on  both  the 
agricultural  and  the  manufacturing  side.  Such 
are  the  preparation  of  flax  and  hemp  fibre,  the 
canning  of  fruit,  the  drying  of  vegetables,  basket- 
making,  the  utilization  of  timber  waste,  the  growth 


84  POSSIBLE  DEVELOPMENTS 

and  extraction  of  drugs,  the  conversion  of  certain 
crops  into  industrial  alcohol,  the  preparation  of 
starch. 

In  several  of  these  directions  the  Development  Com- 
missioners have  already  instituted  experiments  upon  a 
small  commercial  scale,  but  neither  that  body  nor  the 
Board  of  Agriculture  possess  sufficient  powers  to  go  to 
work  with  the  directness  and  on  the  scale  that  is  re- 
quired for  the  inauguration  of  a  new  industry.  Neither 
body  can  participate  in  or  initiate  industrial  ventures 
in  the  way  that  is  possible  to  the  Agricultural  Depart- 
ments of  our  Dominions  and  other  countries.  There 
are  many  minor  rural  industries  which  are  entirely 
neglected  in  the  United  Kingdom,  small  perhaps  in 
themselves,  but  which  if  successful  would  go  far  towards 
increasing  the  prosperity  of  the  rural  population  and  at 
the  same  time  add  to  the  stability  of  our  agriculture  by 
extending  the  variety  of  its  output. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CAPACITY  OF  THE  LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

It  now  remains  to  consider  what  can  be  effected  in  the 
way  of  increasing  the  national  food  production,  for  any 
radical  disturbance  of  existing  conditions  of  farming 
can  only  be  justified  if  it  accomplishes  something  sub- 
stantial towards  making  the  nation  self-supporting  in 
time  of  war.  We  take  as  our  initial  criterion  of  what  is 
possible  the  extent  of  the  arable  land  in  1872,  the  year 
in  which  it  reached  its  highest  point. 

The  following  table,  No.  VI,  summarizes  the  position 
in  1872  and  1913  : 


table  VI.— area  of  cultivated  LAND, 

ARABLE  LAND  AND 

WHEAT  IN   1872 

AND   I913 

Total 

cultiva- 

1    t 

Arable 
land. 

Arable 
land. 

Wheat. 

Wheat 
per  cent, 
of  arable 

ted  area. 

land. 

1,000 

1,000 

Per 

1,000 

Per 

acres. 

acres. 

cent. 

acres. 

cent. 

England  1872 

23,830 

13,839 

58.0 

3,337 

24.1 

»     1913 

24,375 

10,362 

40.8 

1,663 

16.1 

Wales,    1872 

2,636 

1,104 

42.5 

126 

11.4 

1913 

2,755 

696 

25.3 

38 

5.5 

Scotland  1872 

4,538 

3,485 

76.8 

136 

3.9 

»      1913 

4798 

3,302 

68.8 

55 

1-7 

Ireland,  1872 

15,747 

5,505 

34.9 

228 

4.2 

1913 

14,691 

4,979 

33-9 

34 

0.7 

U.K.,      1872 

46,869 

24,031 

51-3 

3,840 

16.0 

1913 

46,741 

19,432 

41.6 

1,792 

9.2 

85 


86         LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

The  most  striking  feature  of  the  change  is  that  in 
England  alone  more  than  three  and  a  half  million  acres 
of  arable  land  have  been  laid  down  to  grass  since  1872. 
That  acreage  ought  certainly  to  be  recovered  for  the 
plough,  not  necessarily  the  same  fields,  but  an  equivalent 
elsewhere,  for  even  in  1872  there  was  a  disproportionate 
amount  of  grass  in  Great  Britain.  But  any  land  which 
paid  then  for  cultivation  can  be  worked  nowadays  more 
cheaply  in  proportion  to  the  output,  if  for  no  other 
reason  because  of  the  introduction  of  the  self-binder 
and  the  motor  plough  and  cultivator  since  1872.  The 
actual  cost  of  cultivation  may  not  have  been  greatly 
reduced  because  of  the  rise  in  wages,  but  the  value  of 
machinery  lies  in  the  power  it  gives  of  speedy  working 
so  that  the  farmer  can  utilize  better  the  opportunities 
afforded  by  the  weather.  Hence  labour  has  become 
more  effective,  and  from  that  and  other  causes  the  out- 
put has  been  increased. 

It  has  been  objected  that  much  of  the  land  thus  laid 
down  in  the  last  forty  years  has  now  become  so  improved 
as  grass  land  that  it  ought  not  to  be  ploughed  up ;  but 
if  it  is  good  grass  land  it  will  make  the  better  arable  land. 
If  its  capacity  for  responding  to  cultivation,  and  not  the 
profit  it  will  earn  without  any  labour,  is  to  be  the 
criterion  of  whether  land  should  be  left  in  grass  or  not, 
then  the  factor  deciding  on  the  side  of  grass  will  be  the 
degree  of  heaviness  and  wetness  rather  than  of  richness. 
Even  a  fatting  pasture  will  produce  much  more  cattle 
food  under  the  plough,  though  as  pasture  its  produc- 
tivity may  be  high  enough  to  justify  its  retention  in 
grass.  But  we  are  not  concerned  with  the  fatting  pas- 
tures ;  the  bulk  of  the  grass  land  in  the  country  could, 
at  best,  only  be  described  as  useful,  and  with  skilled 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PLOUGHING  UP  GRASS  87 

management  and  a  due  expenditure  upon  labour  would 
pay  the  farmer  just  as  well  under  the  plough,  while  it 
would  yield  for  the  nation  more  than  twice  as  much  food 
in  the  shape  of  meat  or  milk,  or  ten  times  as  much  in  the 
form  of  grain.  Again,  it  is  often  urged  that  to  plough  up 
much  of  the  poor  grass  land  would  be  to  unlock  a  ruinous 
heritage  of  weeds  which  are  best  left  undisturbed  now 
that  they  are  safely  covered.  This  is  in  essence  a  plea 
that  bad  farming  must  continue  because  the  ordinary 
tenant  with  limited  capital  will  not  face  the  risk  of 
bringing  the  land  back  into  good  condition.  It  is,  of 
course,  true  that  the  rehabilitation  of  neglected  land 
is  always  an  unremunerative  proceeding  for  the  first 
year  or  two ;  but  the  cost  of  cleaning,  like  that  of 
setting  the  drainage  in  order  or  reforming  the  fences,  is 
to  be  regarded  as  part  of  the  necessary  capital  outlay 
that  must  precede  the  attainment  of  a  higher  level  of 
cultivation.  While  the  occupier  tries  to  make  out  that 
ploughing  up  old  grass  is  costly,  on  the  other  hand  the 
owner  maintains  that  established  grass  land  represents 
a  certain  amount  of  capital  in  the  shape  of  accumulated 
fertility,  of  which  he  will  be  deprived  for  the  benefit  of 
the  tenant  if  the  land  is  put  under  the  plough.  As  the 
old  adage  runs  :  "To  make  a  pasture  breaks  a  man  ; 
to  break  a  pasture  makes  a  man."  This  proposition 
is  perhaps  more  generally  true  than  the  preceding  one. 
In  most  cases  the  man  who  ploughs  up  old  grass  brings 
into  use  plant  food  that  has  been  slowly  accreting  year 
by  year  while  the  land  was  in  pasture  and  can  convert  it 
into  saleable  crops  ;  he  can  take  his  profit  therefrom 
and  leave  the  land  foul  and  robbed  of  this  fertility. 
This  assumes,  however,  a  temporary  tenant  who  has 
no  intention  of  continuing  to  farm  the  land  in  question  ; 


88  LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

he  is  to  be  guarded  against  in  the  same  way  as  any  other 
exploiting  tenant  who  goes  about  looking  for  a  good 
arable  farm,  only  that  he  may  run  it  out.  The  relation 
of  owner  and  tenant  is  one  of  partnership,  and  the  onus 
is  always  on  the  owner  to  see  that  his  working  partner 
does  not  dilapidate  his  property.  Though  the  latent 
value  is  there  in  the  grass  land  it  is  not  productive,  and 
does  not  in  the  majority  of  cases  cause  the  land  to  bring 
in  more  rent ;  as  long  as  there  is  reasonable  security 
that  the  land  will  remain  under  arable  cultivation  and 
will  continue  to  earn  the  same  rent,  the  owner  is  not 
put  in  a  worse  position  by  the  conversion  of  grass  into 
arable.  He  may  have  paid  something  for  the  laying 
down  of  grass  as  a  permanent  improvement,  but  his  loss 
is  only  realized  if  it  becomes  impossible  to  continue  the 
arable  farming  and  he  is  called  upon  to  restore  the  grass. 
But  under  our  cardinal  assumption  the  extension  and 
continuance  of  the  arable  farming  are  necessary  to  the 
welfare  of  the  State,  so  that  the  loss  should  never  accrue, 
and  in  any  case  a  mode  of  insurance  or  guarantee  can 
be  devised  against  the  possible  replacement  of  the 
grass.  The  landowner  has  doubtless  a  just  claim  that 
he  and  not  the  tenant  only  ought  to  have  the  benefit 
of  the  latent  fertility  in  old  grass  land.  A  tribunal 
would  therefore  appear  to  be  necessary  to  assess 
this  value  in  cases  of  dispute,  and  also  to  decide  to 
what  extent  the  owner's  restrictive  covenants  against 
the  ploughing  up  of  grass  land  should  be  allowed  to 
stand. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  method  in  which  the  land 
now  under  cultivation  is  distributed  among  the  various 
crops,  and  the  cropping  that  might  be  obtained  if  we 
could  bring  about  a  return  to  the  same  acreage  of  arable 


CORN  CROPS  AND  MEAT  SUPPLIES      89 

land  as  prevailed  in  1872.  It  would  be  our  aim,  how- 
ever, to  increase  the  wheat  as  much  as  was  consistent 
with  good  farming,  because  from  the  point  of  view  of 
national  safety  wheat  is  the  absolutely  necessary  food  of 
which  a  large  stock  must  be  maintained  in  the  country. 
If  a  real  crisis  came  and  the  country  were  threatened 
with  starvation,  not  only  can  the  ration  of  meat  be 
materially  reduced  without  danger,  but  there  would 
always  be  a  large  reserve  of  meat  in  the  country  in  the 
shape  of  the  breeding  flocks  and  herds.  It  must  also 
be  remembered  that  the  production  from  a  given  area 
of  land  in  the  form  of  corn  and  other  vegetable  materials  j 
will  in  time  of  real  need  support  about  eight  times  \ 
as  many  men  as  will  the  meat  obtainable  from  the  same 
land.  From  eight  to  ten  pounds  of  absolute  food  of 
vegetable  origin  are  consumed  in  making  one  pound  of 
absolute  food  in  the  shape  of  meat ;  in  other  words,  a 
vegetarian  population  can  exist  on  the  produce  of  one- 
eighth  as  much  land  as  would  be  required  by  purely 
meat-eaters.  Without  anticipating  that  it  would  ever 
be  necessary  to  resort  to  vegetarianism,  an  economy 
can  be  effected  during  a  time  of  scarcity  by  altering  the 
general  diet  in  that  direction  and  consuming  vegetable 
produce  instead  of  first  converting  it  into  meat.  But 
this  economy  is  only  possible  if  the  land  is  under  arable 
cultivation  and  can  be  cropped  with  wheat,  oats, 
potatoes,  beans,  etc.,  which  can  be  used  either  as  human 
or  cattle  food,  whereas  grass  land  produces  meat  only. 
We  shall  not,  however,  have  gained,  in  times  of  peace, 
if  the  increase  in  bread  corn  is  purchased  at  the  cost 
of  the  existing  supply  of  meat  and  milk ;  from  the 
financial  point  of  view  we  want  to  increase  both,  but 
in  a  crisis  the  first  necessity  is  to  have  wheat. 
G 


90  LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

In  order  to  obtain  a  more  precise  idea  of  what  may 
be  obtained  in  the  way  of  food  production  both  for 
men  and  cattle  by  an  extension  of  the  arable  area,  the 
following  table  has  been  drawn  up  on  the  supposition 
that  the  acreage  under  the  plough  can  be  restored  to  the 
position  it  occupied  in  1872,  and  that  a  maximum 
area  of  wheat  is  grown.    It  is  not  suggested  that  the 
cropping  indicated  is  the  best  possible  or  that  which 
would  probably  be  adopted  if  farmers  increased  their 
arable  land  to  such  an  extent ;  the  table  is  merely  an 
illustration  which  reduces  the  results  of  the  change  to 
figures.     Taking  the  distribution  of  crops  in  Great 
Britain  in  1914  as  a  starting-point  for  comparison,  and 
increasing  the  arable  to  its  area  in  1872,  Table  VII  shows 
the  proposed  distribution  of  crops  and  Table  VIII  the 
amount  of  cattle  food  produced  on  both  plans.    Ireland 
has  been  left  out  of  the  account  because  the  manner  in 
which  the  land  is  mainly  held  in  Ireland  renders  any 
rapid  extension  of  tillage  difficult  of  attainment.    On 
the  large  grazing  holdings  there  are  neither  men,  imple- 
ments, nor  knowledge  of  arable  cultivation.    On  the 
other  hand,  the  small  proprietors  who  have  just  enough 
land  to  earn  some  sort  of  a  living  by  grazing,  with  two 
or  three  acres  under  little  better  than  spade  cultivation, 
will  always  be  slow  to  move  in  the  direction  of  arable 
farming  and  can  hardly  be  subjected  to  legislative  pres- 
sure to  ensure  a  more  intensive  utilization  of  the  land. 
In  the  example  given,  the  area  under  wheat  is  in- 
creased by  3,340,000  acres,  which,  on  an  average  yield 
of  4  qr.  per  acre,  would  raise  the  home  production  of 
wheat  from  about  20  to  about  57  per  cent,  of  our 
requirements,  or  rather  to  59  per  cent,  of  our  require- 
mxcnts  if  the  average  production  of  the  five  years 


PROPOSED  DISTRIBUTION  OF  CROPS      91 


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1 

92         LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

1908-13  is  taken  as  the  starting-point  instead  of  the 
actual  production  in  191 4. 

It  may  be  argued  that  if  4  qr.  per  acre  is  the  present 
average  yield,  the  land  to  be  broken  up  would  not  yield 
so  much,  because  it  is  just  the  land  best  suited  to  the 
crop  that  has  been  kept  for  wheat  growing.  This  is  in 
part  true  ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  factor  determining 
the  laying  down  to  grass  was  cost  of  cultivation  not 
yield  ;  in  the  main  it  was  the  "  wheat  and  bean  "  land 
that  went  to  grass. 

The  barley  acreage  is  to  be  decreased  by  40,000  acres 
in  view  of  the  steady  fall  in  the  demand  for  and  the 
price  of  barley ;  the  better  qualities  of  home-grown 
barley  are  sold  for  beer,  the  consumption  of  which  is 
likely  to  feel  the  effects  of  the  poverty  of  the  country 
after  the  war.  For  feeding  purposes,  barley  is  better 
replaced  by  oats,  of  which  an  increase  of  880,000  acres 
is  set  down.  Peas  and  beans  are  to  be  increased  con- 
siderably ;  they  find  a  place  in  the  rotation,  enrich  the 
land,  provide  valuable  cattle  food  and  human  food  in  an 
emergency.  An  extension  of  potatoes  by  110,000  acres 
is  suggested ;  this  increase  would  be  more  than  suffi- 
cient to  replace  the  main-crop  potatoes  that  are  now 
imported  from  foreign  countries.  The  total  value  of 
potatoes  imported  amounts  to  £2,000,000  per  annum  ; 
but  much  of  this  is  for  specially  early  potatoes,  which 
may  be  regarded  as  articles  of  luxury  that  are  not 
necessary.  Root  crops  are  to  be  increased  by  160,000 
acres,  and  without  doubt  the  amount  of  cattle  food 
grown  on  the  given  acreage  can  be  still  further  added 
to  by  replacing  the  swedes  to  some  extent  by  vetches, 
rape,  cabbage  and  other  quick-growing  green  crops.  The 
extra  acreage  required  for  these  extensions  is  to  be 


GAIN   OF  CATTLE  FOOD  WITH  ARABLE  93 

obtained  by  borrowing  from  the  grass  both  temporary 
and  permanent,  though  in  Scotland  the  permanent  grass 
is  not  to  be  touched,  because  in  that  country  the  addi- 
tions to  the  grass  land  have  in  the  main  been  obtained 
by  leaving  down  the  temporary  pastures  for  a  longer 
period.  If  we  assume  that  all  the  crops  except  the  wheat 
and  potatoes  are  used  in  the  main  for  cattle  food,  the 
net  result  of  these  changes  would  be  to  produce  at 
home,  instead  of  importing,  wheat  to  the  value  of  £24 
millions  per  annum  (wheat  at  35s.  per  qr.)  and  potatoes 
to  the  value  of  two  million  pounds  per  annum.  The 
effect  upon  the  production  of  cattle  food  is  calculated 
out  in  the  following  table,  which  is  based  upon  the 
average  production  for  the  ten  years  1903-12  and  upon 
the  accepted  ratios  for  the  conversion  of  the  crops  grown 
into  food  units  for  the  production  of  meat  and  milk  on 
the  one  hand  or  work  on  the  other. 

Instead  of  a  loss  the  replacement  of  three  and  a 
half  million  acres  of  grass  land  by  arable  crops  would 
result  in  a  gain  in  the  total  number  of  units  of  cattle 
food  produced,  over  and  above  the  wheat  and  potatoes 
added  to  the  supply  of  human  food.  The  gain  is 
even  greater  than  the  figures  indicate,  because  much 
of  the  food  grown  on  the  arable  can  be  used  for 
fattening  and  rapid  increase,  whereas  the  grass  and 
hay  replaced  are  only  available  for  the  maintenance 
and  slow  growth  of  the  animal.  The  only  change  re- 
quired in  the  feeding  would  be  the  greater  utilization  of 
the  straw  in  many  parts  of  England  ;  in  Scotland  it  is 
already  for  the  main  part  consumed  as  food.  Could  the 
straw  be  subjected  to  some  partly  mechanical  and 
partly  chemical  process  of  predigestion,  its  feeding 
value   would   be   greatly   increased.      Short   of  this 


94 


LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 


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GAIN  OF  CATTLE  FOOD  WITH  ARABLE   95 

process  it  is  probable  that  better  use  can  be  made  of 
straw  in  feeding  by  chaffing  it,  mixing  it  with  some 
succulent  green  crop  and  converting  the  mixture  into 
silage. 

The  barley  imports  would  not  be  affected,  and  though 
the  additional  oats  grown  very  nearly  equal  the  amount 
imported  from  foreign  sources,  we  are  assuming  that 
they  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  replacing  these  imports, 
but  as  part  of  the  cattle  food  required  to  make  up  for 
the  grazing  and  hay  that  has  been  lost  by  the  extension 
of  the  arable  land. 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  redistribution  suggested 
would  upset  the  proper  rotation  of  crops  and  therefore 
could  not  be  realized  in  practice  ;  but  taking  round 
numbers  it  only  represents  10  acres  of  corn  crops  to  i 
of  beans  or  peas,  3  of  roots  and  potatoes,  and  3  of  clover 
and  rotation  grasses.  There  is  plenty  of  experience  to 
show  that  under  modern  conditions  as  to  the  supply  of 
fertilizers  and  machinery  for  cultivation,  corn  crops 
can  be  grown  continuously  on  land  of  average  quality 
with  perhaps  a  break  of  one  year  in  six  for  some  clean- 
ing crop.  The  proportion  of  corn  actually  suggested, 
ten  years  out  of  seventeen,  is  exceeded  in  many  existing 
rotations  ;  in  Norfolk,  for  example,  it  is  customary  to 
grow  three  corn  crops  in  a  five-year  rotation,  and  four 
in  a  six  years'  shift  is  not  uncommon  in  some  districts. 
The  programme  suggested  involves  the  breaking  up  of 
about  4  million  acres  of  grass  land  ;  assuming  that 
every  advantage  was  taken  of  labour-saving  machinery, 
we  can  expect  that  at  least  two  additional  labourers 
will  be  required  per  100  acres  of  new  arable  land.  There 
would  thus  be  an  addition  to  the  population  now  sup- 
ported upon  the  land  of  from  80  to  100  thousand  men, 


96  LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

even  if  the  general  character  of  the  farming  was  not 
intensified. 

This  extra  acreage  of  arable  land  cropped  as  indi- 
cated would  raise  the  proportion  of  wheat  grown  in  the 
country  from  20  per  cent,  to  59  per  cent,  of  our  require- 
ments. Now  we  should  not  wish  to  displace  the  im- 
portations of  wheat  from  India,  Canada,  Australia  and 
other  British  Dominions,  which  amount  to  about  30 
per  cent,  of  our  requirements.  We  can  assume  that 
imports  to  that  extent  would  always  reach  the  country, 
however  stringent  the  blockade,  and  as  they  are  paid 
for  within  the  Empire  the  bill  does  not  depreciate  the 
national  credit.  There  would,  therefore,  remain  a 
further  10  per  cent,  of  our  consumption  still  to  be 
derived  from  foreign  sources,  to  replace  which  would 
require  another  880,000  acres  under  wheat. 

As  the  situation  with  regard  to  wheat  is  the  crux  of 
the  question  from  the  point  of  view  of  national  security 
in  time  of  war,  the  following  table  sets  out  the  facts, 
taking  averages  for  the  five  years  1909-13  : 

TABLE  IX 

Total  imports  of  wheat,    grain  and 

equivalent  of  flour  in  grain  . .  ..  =118.1  million  cwts. 
Inports  of  wheat  and  flour  as  above  : 

From  British  Possessions . .         ..=  55.0      „         „ 
From  foreign  countries    . .  . .  =  63.1       „         „ 

Production  of  wheat  in  the   United 

Kingdom     =  59.64  million  bushels  =  31.9      „         „ 
Average   consumption    of    wheat    in 

United  Kingdom     =118.1  +  31.9=150        ^,        „ 
Arable    land    required    to    grow    the   * 
foreign  imports   at   32   bushels   or 

17  cwt.  per  acre  =  3.71     „      acres. 


ARABLE  REQUIRED  TO  REPLACE  IMPORTS  97 

In  order  to  form  some  judgment  of  what  are  the 
possibilities,  however  remote  they  may  be,  of  pro- 
ducing the  whole  of  the  food  that  we  buy  from 
foreign  countries,  we  may  frame  the  following  estimate, 
necessarily  very  approximate,  of  the  amount  of  extra 
arable  land  that  would  be  required  in  the  United 
Kingdom  for  the  purpose. 

TABLE  X. — ACREAGE  OF  ARABLE  LAND  REQUIRED  TO 
PRODUCE  IMPORTS  OF  FOOD  FROM  FOREIGN  SOURCES 


Imports, 

Imports 

frnm 

Imports 

Arable 

less 
Exports. 

IX  KJL1.X 

British 
Possessions 

to  be 
replaced. 

land 
required. 

Million 

Million 

Million 

Million 

cwts. 

cwts. 

cwts. 

acres. 

Wheat     . . 

116.3 

55.0 

61.3 

3.60 

Barley     . . 

22.2 

6.2 

16.0 

0.74* 

Oats 

18.0 

2.5 

15.5 

0.66* 

Maize 

48.9 

0.6 

48.3 

2.65*t 

Butter     . . 

3-33 

0.8 

2.53 

1.89 

Cheese     . . 

2.15 

1.93 

0.22 

0.07 

Meat        . . 

20.2 

5.7 

14.5 

6.76 
16.37 

*  Assuming  that  both  grain  and  straw  are  consumed  in 
place  of  the  imported  grain. 

t  Replacing  maize  by  oats  and  barley. 


The  acreage  required  to  replace  imports  has  been  calcu- 
lated on  the  following  basis  :  The  number  of  units  of  abso- 
lute food  (starch  equivalents  in  lbs.)  produced  by  British 


98         LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

crops  per  acre,  taking  the  average  yields  of  the  last  ten  years, 
is  as  follows:  Barley, grain  and  straw,  1,716;  oats,  grain  and 
straw,  1,576;  roots,  2,418;  rotation  grass,  840;  permanent 
grass,  645.  The  average  for  arable  land  may  thus  be 
taken  at  1,800  lb.  of  starch  equivalent  per  acre.  The  starch 
equivalents  per  cwt.  of  barley,  oats  and  maize  (grain  only) 
are  79,  67  and  91  lb.  respectively.  60  lb.  of  starch  equiva- 
lent have  to  be  consumed  to  produce  14  lb.  of  live  weight 
increase  or  8  lb.  of  meat  (average  of  beef,  mutton  and  pork). 
This  figure  is  somewhat  high,  being  true  for  the  increase  in 
adult  animals,  whereas  young  stock  make  a  bigger  increase 
on  the  same  weight  of  food.  The  arable  land  is  assumed  to 
produce  4,000  lb.  of  milk  per  acre,  equal  to  150  lb.  of  butter 
or  350  lb.  of  cheese.  A  deduction  has  also  to  be  made  for  the 
food  value  of  the  separated  milk  and  whey  produced  as  by- 
products in  butter  and  cheese  making,  and  also  for  the  straw 
and  the  offal  obtained  with  the  wheat.  Only  10  per  cent,  of 
the  offal  is  allowed  for  because  the  bulk  of  the  wheat  is 
imported  as  grain  ;  its  offals  now  come  into  the  country,  and 
only  the  offals  corresponding  to  the  flour  imports  would  be 
added  to  the  cattle  food  of  the  country  if  the  wheat  was 
grown  at  home. 

Thus  a  total  of  16  million  acres  of  arable  land 
would  be  required  to  grow  the  main  items  of  the  food 
we  import.  Nor  would  this  16  millions  be  enough, 
because  when  they  have  been  taken  from  the  grass  land 
in  order  to  grow  the  imports  we  shall  still  have  lost  the 
cattle  food  that  they  were  previously  producing  as  grass. 
A  further  calculation  shows  that  this  16  millions  would 
have  to  be  increased  to  24  milHon  acres  of  arable  land 
in  order  both  to  replace  the  imports  and  maintain  the 
cattle  food  at  present  derived  from  the  grass. 

This  means  that  nearly  the  whole  of  the  culti- 
vated area  in  the  United  Kingdom,  47  million  acres, 


CAN   THE   U.K.    BE   SELF-SUPPORTING?    99 

would  have  to  be  converted  into  arable  land,  though 
doubtless  a  good  deal  less  would  do  the  work,  because 
any  increase  approaching  this  magnitude  in  our  acreage 
under  the  plough  would  only  be  attained  under  such  a 
generally  higher  standard  of  farming  that  the  production 
on  all  the  better  lands  would  be  greatly  intensified.  We 
are  so  far  from  the  realization  of  any  development  on  this 
scale  that  even  to  set  down  these  approximate  estimates 
of  how  it  might  be  accomplished  may  seem  to  be  vision- 
ary ;  however,  imperfect  and  remote  as  they  may  be,  I 
have  thought  it  advisable  to  let  them  stand.  So  much 
has  been  said  from  time  to  time  as  to  the  possibility 
on  the  one  hand  of  rendering  Great  Britain  self-sup- 
porting in  the  matter  of  food,  and  on  the  other  of  the 
impracticability  of  any  departure  from  our  present 
system,  that  we  may  as  well  determine  what  order  of 
facts  we  have  to  face.  To  produce  our  own  food  may 
be  a  vision ;  I  would  prefer  to  regard  it  as  an  ideal 
towards  which  to  work,  confident  that  every  step  we 
take  in  that  direction  is  an  addition  to  the  strength  and 
stability  of  the  nation. 

To  return  to  the  more  modest  programme  under  con- 
sideration, the  reconversion  of  nearly  4  million  acres  of 
grass  land  to  arable — the  restoration  of  the  state  of 
affairs  prevailing  in  1872 — it  is  at  least  certain  that 
even  such  a  distribution  of  the  land  (in  Great  Britain, 
18  million  acres  of  arable  out  of  a  total  of  32  million 
acres  of  cultivated  land,  or  56  per  cent.)  by  no  means 
represents  the  limit  of  possible  effort.  In  France  the 
arable  land  was,  in  1910,  nearly  65  per  cent,  of  the 
cultivated  land  ;  in  Denmark,  in  1^2,  the  arable  land 
including  the  rotation  grass  was  as  much  as  89.4  per 
cent,  of  the  agricultural  area ;   even  in  Holland,  with 


100        LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 

its  large  proportion  of  polders  and  wet  land,  the  arable 
amounted  to  40  per  cent,  of  the  land  reckoned  as  in 
cultivation. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  the  case  to  be  considered  : 
though  the  average  yield  from  British  land  is  high 
compared  with  those  attained  in  most  other  countries, 
it  is  susceptible  of  very  considerable  improvement.  For 
many  crops,  especially  roots,  the  average  yield  returned 
is  very  far  below  that  which  an  ordinarily  good  farmer 
expects  and  indeed  consistently  attains.  To  a  certain 
extent  the  good  farmers  are  in  possession  of  the  best 
land,  but  none  the  less  the  bulk  of  the  cropped  land  will 
yield  much  more  liberal  returns  with  the  use  of  more 
fertilizers  and  more  skilled  cultivation.  It  may  be 
calculated  that  the  farmers  in  the  United  Kingdom  only 
consume  artificial  fertilizers  of  one  sort  or  another  at  the 
rate  of  little  more  than  i*  cwt.  per  acre  of  arable  land 
per  annum  ;  with  good  farming  this  quantity  could  be 
doubled  with  advantage,  and  we  might  expect  to  realize 
from  this  cause  alone  10  per  cent,  increase  in  the  total 
production  of  crops.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  if  the 
farming  throughout  Great  Britain  reached  the  standard, 
not  of  the  best,  but  of  the  good  farmers  existing  in  every 
district,  there  would  be  an  increased  production  of  food 
of  from  10  to  15  per  cent,  without  any  addition  to  the 
existing  proportion  of  arable  land. 

Denmark  has  already  been  mentioned  as  a  country 
possessing  an  exceptionally  high  proportion  of  arable 
land,  but  Denmark  is  even  more  instructive  as  an 
example  of  how  a  country  can  regenerate  its  agriculture 
within  a  comparatively  short  space  of  time.  After  the 
disastrous  war  of  1864  a  great  national  movement 

*  See  Appendix  IV. 


GROWTH  OF  DANISH  AGRICULTUi/Eiof. 

towards  education  took  place;  the  results  of  that  move- 
ment in  the  development  of  agriculture  are  to  be  seen 
in  the  following  figures,  the  most  remarkable  feature 
of  which  is  the  way  the  rate  of  improvement  has  been 
rising  in  the  latter  years  of  the  period. 


Total  cultiva- 

Com and 

Rotation 

Permanent 

Year. 

ted  area. 
1,000  acres. 

other 
Crops. 

Grass. 

Grass. 

1871 

6,412 

1,837 

1 
3,575 

1888 

6,829 

3,997 

2,265 

567 

1896 

6,947 

4.050 

2,333 

564 

1901 

6,988 

4,109 

2,293 

586 

1912 

7.289 

4.522 

T'>75T- 

1,016 

Between  1896  and  1912  the  proportion  the  corn  bears 
to  the  other  crops  has  remained  almost  constant  at 
40  per  cent.,  i.e.,  two  straw  crops  in  a  five  year  rotation, 
but  the  proportion  of  root  crops  has  risen  from  under 
5  to  over  12  per  cent,  of  the  agricultural  area. 

The  effect  of  the  extension  of  the  cultivated  area  and 
other  improvements  is  most  strikingly  to  be  seen  in  the 
numbers  of  live  stock,  as  follows  : 


Year. 

Total  Cattle. 

Milch  Cows. 

Pigs. 

1871 

1,238,898 

— 

442,421 

1881 

1,470,078 

898,790 

527.417 

1888 

1459.527 

954.250 

770.785 

1893 

1,696,190 

1,011,098 

829,131 

1898 

1.744.797 

1,067,265 

1,168,493 

1903 

1,840,466 

1,089,073 

1.456,699 

1909 

2,253,982 

1,281,974 

1,467,822 

1914 

2,462,862 

1,310,268 

2,496,686 

X02 


LAND  FOR  FOOD  PRODUCTION 


Nor  has  the  improvement  been  confined  to  numbers 
and  acreage ;  from  the  following  table  it  will  be  seen 
how  the  yield  of  cereals  has  been  raised  by  selection  of 
better  varieties,  more  fertilisers  and  improved  cultiva- 
tion : 


Denmark 


England 


Years. 


Wheat 


Barley 


Oats. 


Years. 


Wheat 


Barley 


Oats. 


1888-92 
1908-12 


Bush  els 


34-6 
42.0 


per 
29.9 
36.5 


acre 
32.2 
41-3 


Bush  els 


1885-94 
1902-11 


29.4 
31.8 


per 
33.1 
33-4 


acre 
40.6 
42.3 


The  average  Danish  yield  has  increased  by  24  per 
cent,  in  twenty  years  and  now  overtops  the  English, 
which  only  increased  in  seventeen  years  by  4  per  cent., 
a  barely  significant  figure. 

The  average  annual  yield  of  butter  per  cow  was 
estimated  in  1864  as  about  80  lb.  ;  by  1887  it  had  risen 
to  116  lb.,  by  1908  to  220  lb.,  and  by  1914  to  229  lb. 
In  the  competition  between  herds  as  to  butter  produc- 
tion, the  tests  and  observations  for  which  extend  over 
two  years,  the  average  production  of  butter  per  cow 
in  the  four  prize  winning  herds  in  1897-9  was  a  trifle 
over  300  lb.  per  annum ;  in  1911-13  in  the  four  prize 
winning  herds  it  had  reached  the  astonishing  average 
of  445  lb. 

Naturally  this  progress  in  the  industry  has  been 


RESULTS  OF  NATIONAL  EFFORT       103 

attended  by  an  increase  in  the  numbers  of  people 
"  living  by  agriculture,"  as  follows  : 


Year. 

Number  of  Persons. 

1870 

788735 

1880 

888,931 

1890 

882,336 

1901 

971,894 

1911 

969,227 

Now  all  this  remarkable  advance  within  half  a 
century  has  been  achieved  deliberately  by  the  edu- 
cational activity  in  its  widest  sense  of  the  State, 
working  it  is  true  on  a  favourable  soil — the  temper  of 
a  people  who  were  rousing  themselves  to  shake  off  the 
effects  of  defeat.  In  the  face  of  these  figures,  which 
cover  the  period  during  which  as  the  records  show 
British  farming  was  declining,  will  anyone  be  found 
seriously  to  maintain  that  the  stimulus  of  the  State 
cannot  be  appHed  to  agriculture  and  that  our  farmers 
know  how  to  make  the  best  use  of  the  land  when  left 
to  themselves? 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING  UPON 
PRICES 

The  degree  to  which  arable  farming  may  be  extended 
or  even  maintained  must,  however,  be  Hmited  by  two 
factors — the  average  price  of  the  chief  agricultural 
products,  wheat  and  meat  for  example,  and  the  price 
of  labour.  We  know  that  at  the  scale  of  prices  prevail- 
ing during  the  years  immediately  preceding  the  war, 
with  wheat  at  about  35s.  per  quarter,  arable  farming  was 
distinctly  prosperous,  so  much  so  that  it  might  with 
profit  have  been  extended  over  at  least  as  much  land 
as  had  been  under  the  plough  in  1872.  If  we  further 
take  into  account  the  possibilities  of  diminishing  costs 
by  the  greater  use  of  machinery  and  improved  organiza- 
tion, as  on  the  suggested  large  scale  farms,»we  might 
expect  that  the  land  could  pay  wages  at  rates  compar- 
able to  those  received  by  labourers  in  other  industries, 
and  yet  provide  a  reasonable  return  for  capital  and 
management.  But  if  prices  again  go  down  to  the  level 
that  was  reached  in  the  'nineties  and  wheat  has  to  be 
sold  at  well  under  30s.,  all  these  prospects  vanish. 

With  wheat  permanently  at  25s.  and  other  produce 
to  correspond  (a  rough  equivalence  will  always  be  main- 
tained because  wheat  can  be  used  to  replace  other 
feeding-stuffs),  no  available  skill  or  organization  can 
keep  under  arable  cultivation  any  but  the  choicest  of 

104 


LABOUR  AND  PRICES  '  105 

British  soils,  and  at  the  same  time  pay  the  labourers 
21S.  a  week.  Rents  might  even  be  extinguished,  and 
yet  much  of  the  land  would  fail  to  pay  its  way  under  the 
plough ;  the  mere  cost  of  cultivation  would  swallow  all 
the  receipts.  What  the  limiting  price  is  for  the  various 
soils  and  climates  to  be  found  in  Great  Britain  cannot  be 
exactly  estimated  from  the  data  at  command,  but  we 
have  as  a  general  guide  the  fact  that  after  wheat  had 
risen  to  30s.  and  over,  land  in  England  still  continued 
to  go  down  to  grass,  even  though  wages  were  much 
below  the  21s.  rate.  With  farming  what  it  is  and  rents 
at  their  present  level  (equivalent  to  about  5s.  a  quarter 
on  wheat)  the  farmer  considers  that  he  will  make  better 
profits  by  putting  down  much  of  his  land  into  grass.  It 
is  true  that  substantial  reductions  in  cost  might  be 
effected  by  more  skilful  and  wholesale  working,  but  the 
general  principle  remains  untouched  that  on  land  of  any 
given  quality  there  comes  a  point  when  arable  cultiva- 
tion cannot  be  maintained  because  of  the  smallness  of 
the  returns  for  the  produce  and  the  comparatively  high 
proportion  that  labour  bears  to  the  cost.  An  acre  of 
arable  laitd  may  produce  twice  as  much  as  an  acre  of 
grass  land,  but  the  labour  needed  is  at  least  ten  times  as 
great ;  at  some  stage  in  the  relative  prices  of  labour  and 
produce  the  grass  land  must  become  more  profitable 
than  the  arable.  Nor  will  high  farming  to  secure  a 
greater  output  per  acre  remedy  matters  ;  we  are  suffi- 
ciently near  to  the  limit  of  production  for  the  law  of 
diminishing  returns  to  come  into  play.  The  last  quarter 
is  always  the  most  expensive  to  produce  in  labour  as 
in  other  expenditure,  and  Sir  John  Lawes'  old  maxim  is 
true,  that  high  farming  is  no  cure  for  low  prices. 
The  small  holder  cannot  solve  the  difficulty ;   as  a 

H 


io6    DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING 

rule  he  evades  the  intensity  of  foreign  competition  by 
producing  only  vegetables,  fruit  or  milk,  which  are 
naturally  protected  by  the  necessity  of  freshness  and 
the  relatively  heavy  cost  of  freights.  But  these  mar- 
kets cannot  be  indefinitely  extended.  Milk  is  already 
wholly  produced  at  home ;  vegetables  and  fruit  imported 
from  foreign  countries  only  amount  to  £6  millions  in 
value,  representing  the  production  of  perhaps  300,000 
acres  of  land,  which  leaves  the  main  business  of  agri- 
culture untouched.  Moreover,  it  is  not  be  expected 
that  the  small  holder  will  be  left  in  sole  possession  of 
the  fruit  and  vegetable  market ;  the  more  unremunera- 
tive  ordinary  arable  farming  becomes,  the  more  will 
the  large  producer  tend  to  turn  his  energies  into 
channels  that  still  offer  the  prospects  of  profit  and  where 
his  powers  of  wholesale  working  will  enable  him  to 
compete  successfully  with  the  small  holder.  In  fact, 
both  small  and  large  farmers  are  in  the  same  boat :  the 
returns  of  both  depend  upon  prices  that  are  fixed  in 
the  main  by  foreign  competition  to  supply  the  staple 
articles  of  production — wheat  and  meat,  because  these 
prices  in  their  turn  determine  the  extent  of  the  in- 
ternal competition  to  secure  a  share  in  the  production 
of  the  articles  that  are  naturally  protected,  like  fruit 
and  vegetables  and  milk. 

It  follows  from  this  argument  that  if  the  State,  for 
reasons  of  national  security  and  insurance  against 
the  effects  of  war,  must  obtain  a  larger  production  of 
food  at  home  and  greater  employment  upon  the  land, 
which  can  only  be  effected  by  an  increase  in  the  area 
of  arable  cultivation,  it  cannot  leave  agriculture  to  the 
unrestricted  play  of  foreign  competition,  but  must 
ensure  that  the  farmers'  returns  do  not  fall  below  a 


BOUNTIES  OR  DUTIES  107 

certain  level.  This  takes  us  into  the  very  debatable 
land  of  duties  and  bounties.  Both  may  be  regarded 
as  economically  unsound  in  the  sense  that  they  would 
make  the  nation  as  a  whole  pay  more  for  the  food  it 
consumes  than  it  would  if  left  free  to  purchase  in  the 
open  market  that  exists  during  times  of  peace.  Both 
benefit  one  class  of  producer  at  the  expense  of  the 
whole  community  of  consumers,  both  carry  with  them 
certain  incidental  dangers  such  as  the  encouragement 
to  the  formation  of  rings  and  trusts,  the  removal  of  the 
stimulus  of  competition,  etc.  We  may  concede  the 
validity  of  all  the  standard  free  trade  arguments,  grant 
that  the  maintenance  of  agricultural  prices  is  likely 
to  be  attended  by  some  expense  to  the  nation,  and  yet 
accept  that  cost  as  a  part  of  the  national  defences,  as 
necessary  and  as  immediately  unremunerative  as  the 
Army  or  the  Navy.  It  is  more  than  possible  that  the 
need  for  duties  or  bounties  will  not  arise  ;  before  the 
war  it  seemed  likely  that  the  rise  in  fundamental  food 
prices  would  be  maintained  for  some  time  to  come,  and 
they  were  high  enough  to  sustain  much  of  the  develop- 
ment of  agriculture  that  we  are  seeking.  But  it  is 
difficult  to  prophesy  what  prices  are  going  to  be  when 
peace  comes  again ;  even  the  most  experienced  econo- 
mists differ  in  their  opinions.  From  one  point  of  view 
the  great  destruction  of  men  and  materials  that  has 
been  wrought  must  diminish  production  and  so  raise 
prices  ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  objected  that 
the  destruction  has  been  wrought  in  the  old  countries 
which  were  buyers.  The  new  countries  which  are  the 
great  producers  of  cheap  food  are  untouched,  and  have 
been  even  stimulated  by  the  needs  of  the  old  world; 
they  will  still  have  their  produce  to  sell  in  a  market 


io8     DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING 

diminished  both  in  numbers  and  purchasing  power, 
so  that  the  price  of  wheat  and  meat  will  fall. 

Let  prices  be  what  they  will,  the  uncertainty  is 
almost  as  bad  for  development  as  actual  low  prices  ; 
the  British  farmer,  if  he  is  to  plough  up  grass  land  on  any 
considerable  scale,  must  have  some  security  as  to  the 
basis  on  which  he  can  conduct  his  business. 

Assuming,  then,  that  the  State  decides  to  bring  about 
a  greater  production  of  food  at  home,  it  must  begin 
by  either  stabilizing  the  prices  of  agricultural  produce, 
or  ensuring  in  other  ways  an  adequate  return  to  the 
farmer,  at  any  rate  during  the  critical  years  while  the 
change  is  being  made  and  men  are  being  accustomed 
to  new  methods.  On  the  whole  a  system  of  bounties 
on  production  seems  to  be  preferable  to  one  of  duties 
on  imports;  the  country  is  surer  of  a  return  for  its 
outlay  and  knows  exactly  what  its  policy  is  costing, 
and  the  consumer  does  not  get  the  price  put  up  artifi- 
cially against  him  by  the  operations  of  a  ring  formed 
behind  the  shelter  of  a  tariff  wall.  One  proposal  is 
that  put  forward  by  Lord  Milner's  Committee  on  Food 
Production  in  1915 — to  fix  a  standard  price  for  wheat 
and  to  pay  to  the  farmer  for  each  quarter  of  market- 
able corn  the  amount  by  which  the  average  official 
price  for  the  year  falls  below  the  standard  adopted. 
The  only  new  machinery  required  would  be  the  attend- 
ance on  due  notice  of  an  excise  officer  or  even  a  police- 
man when  threshing  was  taking  place  in  order  to  register 
the  amount  of  head  corn  passing  through  the  machine, 
for  which  a  certificate  would  be  given  to  the  farmer. 
The  farmer  would  preserve  his  certificates  and  claim 
on  them  at  the  end  of  the  year  should  the  declared 
average  price  of  British  corn  for  the  year  fall  below  the 


A  GUARANTEED  PRICE  OF  WHEAT     109 

fixed  standard.  This  procedure  would  get  over  all 
difficulties  caused  by  varying  quality  in  the  farmer's 
output ;  he  would  still  try  to  make  the  best  price  he 
could  and  get  all  advantages  of  growing  seed  corn  and 
the  like,  while  the  farmer  who  turned  out  his  wheat 
in  bad  condition  would  suffer  the  loss  consequent  on 
its  realizing  less  than  the  average  price  for  the  year. 
It  would  probably  be  sufficient  to  confine  the  bounty 
to  wheat.  In  the  first  place  it  is  the  production  of  wheat 
we  most  desire  to  stimulate.  Wheat  cannot  occupy  the 
whole  of  the  arable  land,  and  a  bounty  on  wheat  would 
act  as  a  general  bounty  on  arable  farming.  If,  however, 
standard  prices  were  similarly  fixed  for  oats  and  barley, 
arable  farmers  would  be  assisted  in  all  districts,  for  the 
growth  of  one  or  other  cereal  forms  part  of  every  system 
of  arable  farming.  Some  danger  might  be  apprehended 
lest  farmers  should  turn  their  attention  entirely  to  corn- 
growing  and  not  maintain  enough  stock  to  make  the 
farmyard  manure  required  to  keep  their  land  in  con- 
dition. But  few  men  would  be  able  to  embark  upon 
continuous  corn-growing  on  Mr.  Front's  system,  which 
depends  upon  a  convenient  market  for  straw ;  the 
majority  would  need  to  convert  their  straw  into  manure, 
and  there  is  no  way  of  doing  that  except  by  cattle.  It 
is  possible  that  there  would  be  less  of  the  intensive 
cattle  feeding  that  is  practised  in  Norfolk  and  the  other 
bullock-fattening  counties,  but  it  has  been  for  many 
years  an  uneconomic  process  ;  if  the  cattle  are  managed 
primarily  as  producers  of  manure  from  straw  without 
trying  to  enrich  it  so  much  by  the  heavy  consumption 
of  cake,  there  may  be  less  beef  for  sale  but  the  farm- 
yard manure  that  is  wanted  to  keep  up  the  humus  in 
the  soil  will  still  be  made. 


no  DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING 

Another  plan  which  is  free  from  some  of  the 
objections  to  a  bounty  on  wheat  or  cereals  generally 
would  be  to  pay  a  certain  sum  annually  on  the 
land  brought  under  arable  cultivation  over  and 
above  that  which  was  so  used  at  the  close  of  the 
war.  This  plan  has  the  advantage  of  paying  only 
for  what  was  obtained — the  extension  of  the  arable 
area.  It  would  be  more  of  the  nature  of  a  bargain 
between  the  State  and  the  farmers  to  secure  a  system 
of  cultivation  which  the  State  desires,  but  which  the 
farmer  might  otherwise  not  consider  profitable  to  him- 
self. The  amount  to  be  paid  could  be  adjusted  to  an 
equivalence  with  the  other  proposal  of  a  guaranteed 
price  for  wheat.  For  example,  if  the  State  guarantees 
a  minimum  of  40s.  a  quarter  for  wheat,  this  would 
amount  to  a  bounty  of  £2  per  acre  when  the  price  of 
wheat  fell  to  30s.  As  wheat  would  not  on  the  whole  be 
grown  more  often  than  one  year  in  four,  a  bounty  of  los. 
per  acre  on  the  extra  arable  land  obtained  would  then 
be  equivalent  to  the  guaranteed  price  of  40s.  for  wheat. 
It  would  even  be  possible  to  fix  a  sliding  scale  of  pay- 
ment varying  with  the  declared  price  of  cereals.  This 
proposal  would  require  rather  more  administration 
than  a  guaranteed  price  for  wheat,  as  it  would  involve 
a  more  exact  record  of  each  farmer's  cropping  than  at 
present  exists ;  but  the  difficulties  can  be  overcome,  and 
more  exact  statistics  of  the  cropping  of  the  land  in  the 
country  are  themselves  worth  paying  something  for. 
Arrangements  could  be  made  whereby  the  farmer  could 
anticipate  the  payments  for  some  years  by  obtaining 
them  in  the  form  of  a  loan  which  would  give  him  the  capi- 
tal he  needs  for  the  extension  of  his  arable  cultivation. 
This  plan  has  the  great  advantage  of  fixing  within  small 


BOUNTIES  ON  EXTENSION  OF  ARABLE  iii 

limits  the  commitments  of  the  State  each  year ;  it  would 
represent  a  payment  for  services  rendered,  and  it  would 
not  give  any  unearned  assistance  to  the  farmer  who  finds 
his  arable  land  remunerative  at  the  pre-war  scale  of 
prices.  Again,  it  would  leave  the  farmer  free  to  grow 
whatever  arable  crops  were  most  useful  to  his  business  ; 
the  dairy  farmer,  for  example,  would  be  encouraged  to 
feed  his  cows  upon  cultivated  land  and  not  depend  upon 
cheap  grass.  If  the  nation  obtained  the  extra  arable 
land,  though  it  was  normally  employed  in  producing  the 
more  remunerative  milk  and  meat,  in  time  of  war  it  could 
be  at  once  sown  with  wheat.  A  sliding  scale  of  pay- 
ments would  further  get  over  the  objection  that  attaches 
to  paying  any  bounty  when  prices  rise  to  such  an 
extent  as  to  render  the  arable  farming  profitable  with- 
out any  assistance.  It  would  be  an  insurance  against 
the  occurrence  of  conditions  that  drive  the  farmer  back 
to  cheap  grass  land  farming,  and  would  give  him  the 
security  he  needs  before  embarking  upon  new  methods 
of  cultivation. 

The  fundamental  objection  to  bounties  or  duties 
alike  is  that  some  of  the  State's  expenditure  goes 
into  the  pockets  of  men  who  have  done  nothing  to 
earn  it.  Consider  in  the  one  case  the  man  who  can 
make  wheat-growing  pay  at  present  prices  (or  rather 
at  the  price  prevailing  before  the  war),  and  has  in  con- 
sequence as  large  an  acreage  of  arable  land  and  perhaps 
of  wheat  itself  as  his  land  will  stand.  A  bounty  will 
be  so  much  pure  gain  to  him ;  the  State  may  have  to 
pay  him  a  considerable  sum  in  any  one  year  for  which 
it  does  not  get  a  single  extra  quarter  of  wheat.  Pre- 
sumably the  extra  profit  would  soon  be  swallowed  up 
by  a  corresponding  increase  of  rent;  but  whether  the 


112  DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING 

fanner  continues  to  draw  the  bounty  or  it  is  passed  on 
to  the  landlord,  the  prime  fact  remains  that  the  State 
pays  something  for  which  it  receives  no  return.  Indeed, 
the  whole  of  this  fundamental  objection  to  bounties  or 
duties  turns  on  the  question  of  rent.  If  certain  land  can 
only  be  brought  under  arable  cultivation  by  the  opera- 
tion of  bounties  or  duties,  all  the  land  that  had  already 
been  profitable  as  arable  receives  an  unearned  incre- 
ment which  in  time  reaches  the  landowner,  because  as 
the  profit-earning  power  of  the  land  is  enhanced  its 
letting  value  will  rise  correspondingly.  Rent,  in  fact, 
represents  the  margin  between  the  value  of  the  produce 
and  the  cost  of  production  in  its  widest  sense,  including 
the  remuneration  the  farmer  expects  for  his  manage- 
ment and  the  use  of  his  capital.  The  changes  in  rental 
may  lag  behind  the  changes  in  the  value  of  the  produce, 
but  ultimately  the  adjustment  will  be  effected  under 
the  pressure  of  the  competition  for  the  good  land. 
Here  is  the  prime  difficulty  attaching  to  either  protec- 
tive duties  or  bounties  on  agricultural  production,  that 
land  is  of  unequal  value  and  that  the  owner  eventually 
receives  all  the  benefit  when  the  land  is  capable  of 
producing  at  a  profit  without  assistance. 

I  am  only  aware  of  one  method  of  meeting  this 
objection — that  the  State  should  become  the  universal 
landowner,  and  so  get  back  any  increment  in  value 
brought  about  by  its  own  action.  The  State  might,  in 
fact,  give  the  landowner  security  for  an  annual  income 
equal  to  the  present  rental  and  take  itself  the  fluctua- 
tions in  value  brought  about  in  one  direction  or  other 
by  its  own  action,  by  foreign  competition,  or  by  the 
growth  of  the  community.  There  is  nothing  essentially 
confiscatory  or  unjust  in  such  an  arrangement,  and  it 


EFFECT  OF  BOUNTIES  UPON   RENT   113 

would  be  possible  to  leave  to  such  landlords  as  desired 
to  retain  their  leadership  the  power  to  control  and 
develop  their  land.  The  State,  however,  would  then 
be  able  to  strike  a  bargain  and  receive  payment  for  such 
additions  to  the  value  of  any  given  area  of  land  as  were 
brought  about  by  the  imposition  of  duties  or  the  award 
of  bounties.  With  this  security  the  State  would  be  able 
to  embark  upon  any  policy  designed  to  bring  about  the 
more  intensive  use  of  the  soil  without  saddling  itself 
with  the  expense  of  rewarding  the  owners  of  such  land 
as  required  no  artificial  stimulus  to  bring  it  into  the 
system  of  cultivation  desired.  The  State  could  sum 
up  the  cost  of  its  policy,  knowing  that  it  would  be  pay- 
ing only  for  what  it  effected,  and  could  form  a  judgment 
as  to  whether  the  benefits  accruing,  indirect  and  pros- 
pective, were  likely  to  be  equivalent  to  the  direct  ex- 
penditure to  be  incurred. 

It  is  not  worth  while  discussing  in  detail  so 
remote  and  controversial  a  proposition ;  it  may 
well  be  that  the  need  of  considering  it  will  not 
arise,  because  agricultural  prices  after  the  war  may 
remain  at  such  a  level  as  will  pay  for  the  extension  of 
arable  farming  that  is  desired.  But  it  is  necessary  to 
insist  upon  the  fact  that  the  extent  of  arable  farming  is 
dependent  upon  the  prices  for  produce ;  that  if  the  State 
for  its  own  safety  must  obtain  a  maximum  of  arable 
land,  it  may  find  it  necessarj^  to  extend  some  measure 
of  assistance  to  the  farmers,  in  which  case  it  could 
secure  itself  from  unnecessary  loss  by  at  the  same  time 
taking  over  the  land  with  any  increments  in  value  due 
to  its  own  action. 

This  much  is  certain :  that  in  the  critical  period  of 
the  reconstruction  of  our  national  economy,  the  State 


114    DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING 

cannot  afford  to  allow  the  use  to  which  its  land  is  to 
be  put  to  be  merely  dictated  by  the  prospects  of  indi- 
vidual profit.  The  most  convinced  free  trader  must 
admit  that  his  principles  cannot  have  free  play  during 
the  war,  because  the  conditions  on  which  they  are  based 
no  longer  exist,  and  as  the  state  of  economic  dislocation 
persists  for  long  after  the  war,  the  argument  that  any 
proposals  to  give  direct  State  assistance  to  the  par- 
ticiilar  industry  of  agriculture  must  be  dismissed 
because  such  action  is  contrary  to  free  trade  prin- 
ciples, is  beside  the  question.  It  is  a  valid  principle  that 
a  family  should  live  within  its  income,  but  when  it  is 
faced  with  the  necessity  of  rebuilding  its  house  after  a 
fire,  it  may  have  to  put  that  principle  aside  in  order  to 
get  a  roof  over  its  head. 

What  are  the  alternative  prospects  if  we  leave  things 
to  take  their  chance  ?  The  future  cannot  but  look  dark, 
the  prospects  of  the  course  of  trade  cannot  but  appear 
uncertain  ;  what  is  sure  is  general  impoverishment  and 
heavy  taxation.  The  wisdom  of  the  ancients  will  counsel 
the  farmer  to  sit  tight  and  reduce  his  commitments.  He 
has  before  him  an  excellent  opportunity  of  playing  for 
safety  by  laying  down  his  land  to  grass,  for  thereby  he 
can  reduce  his  capital  at  risk,  and  can  curtail  his  ex- 
penditure without  greatly  diminishing  his  profits. 
While  many  farmers  accept  the  rise  in  wages  brought 
about  by  the  war  as  a  permanent  change,  others  antici- 
pate that  the  disbandment  of  the  army  and  the  indus- 
trial depression  consequent  on  the  general  poverty  will 
result  in  considerable  unemployment,  so  that  wages  will 
come  down  again  to  their  former  level  or  somethirg  less. 
Then,  if  prices  serve,  the  cautious  farmer  can  resume  his 
arable  farming  on  the  old  basis  of  cheap  labour  without 


THE  CONSEQUENCES  OF  INACTION     115 

troubling  himself  to  reduce  costs  by  the  application  of 
machinery  and  improved  methods.  But  his  first 
impulse  will  be  to  make  himself  secure  by  an  extension 
of  grass,  as  many  farmers  are  doing  to-day,  and  he  will 
pick  up  the  threads  slowly  and  carefully  ;  he  will  make 
very  sure  that  prices  are  going  to  be  good  enough  and 
labour  cheap  before  he  moves  even  back  to  his  old 
position.  The  experience  of  the  last  fifteen  years 
teaches  us  that  the  farmer  who  has  once  got  his  land 
down  to  grass  is  very  cautious  about  breaking  it  up 
again.  If  prices  fall  below  the  pre-war  level  we  shall 
see  England  steadily  moving  towards  the  condition  of 
universal  grazing  and  depopulation  that  characterize 
large  portions  of  Ireland. 

Nor  is  the  farmer  to  be  blamed  if  he  adopts  a  con- 
servative policy.  Apart  from  self-interest,  he  is  told 
that  he  can  best  serve  the  needs  of  the  country  by 
making  his  farm  pay.  The  State  has  taken  no  par- 
ticular care  of  him  in  the  past,  and  if  he  sees  in 
the  period  of  approaching  reconstruction  that  the 
State  is  again  indifferent  to  agriculture  and  content  to 
let  it  go  its  own  way,  he  will  be  more  than  justified  in 
taking  his  own  line  and  making  use  of  his  land  according 
to  his  lights.  He  asks  for  a  lead,  but  mere  appeals  to  his 
patriotism  and  advice  from  the  chair  will  be  neglected  ; 
he  will  judge  of  the  country's  needs  by  the  effort  the 
country  makes. 

Meantime,  what  of  the  men  who  cannot  wait  ? 
Are  we  prepared  to  accept  a  widespread  emigration, 
with  the  corollary  of  heightened  taxation  on  those  who 
remain  and  a  diminished  earning  power  of  the  com- 
munity? We  do  not  wish  to  deprive  the  Dominions  of 
a  single  man  who  can  earn  a  better  living  there,  remem- 


ii6     DEPENDENCE  OF  ARABLE  FARMING 

bering  how  this  war  has  shown  us  that  their  men  and 
our  men  are  one  people.  But  Enghsh  land  offers  opportu- 
nities as  good  or  better  than  the  land  beyond  the  seas  ; 
it  also  can  carry  men  if  only  equal  access  is  given  to  it. 
Are  we,  again,  prepared  to  face  the  discontent  of  the 
unemployed  and  the  scantily-paid,  who  see  the  land 
comparatively  unused  and  earning  profits  only  for  the 
few  ?  A  good  many  men  who  have  served  in  Flanders 
or  France  have  been  led  to  think  about  the  universal 
tillage  they  see  there,  and  to  wonder  if  English  land  is 
not  amenable  to  similar  development.  Such  discon- 
tent may  easily  lead  to  violence,  or  at  least  to  hasty 
legislative  action  that  will  have  small  regard  to  the 
interests  of  owners  and  present  occupiers.  Now  is  the 
time  for  preparation ;  the  State  must  frame  its  policy 
before  the  pressure  comes  upon  it. 

I  submit  that  such  a  policy  must  be  based  upon  two 
fundamental  propositions :  first,  that  the  land  must  be 
made  to  produce  more  food  for  the  nation ;  secondly, 
that  the  labourer  must  be  paid  a  living  wage.  To 
effect  this  we  cannot  trust  to  private  enterprise  alone, 
i.e.,  to  the  prospects  of  individual  profit.  We  have 
every  reason  to  conclude  from  experience  that  arable 
farming  on  which  increased  food  production  depends 
may  not  lead  to  increased  proiit,  farmers  and  the  land 
system  being  what  they  are,  and  considerations  of 
personal  profit  alone  make  in  general  for  low  wages, 
however  much  the  few  may  perceive  that  the  ultimate 
efficiency  of  the  labourer  is  conditional  upon  his  being 
adequately  paid. 

The  State  must  intervene  to  bring  about  progress 
and  not  decay,  and  to  secure  that  the  opportunity  the 
national  crisis  affords  is  turned  to  national  uses.    We 


ACTION  OR  INACTION  117 

cannot  tolerate  in  this  connection  the  argument  that 
any  action  of  the  State  is  so  sure  to  be  mistaken  and  to 
be  mismanaged  in  the  actual  undertaking  that  we  had 
better  let  things  alone  and  trust  to  private  enterprise. 
The  State  may  seem  to  have  made  blunders  enough  in 
the  conduct  of  the  present  war  to  justify  such  pessimism, 
but  it  has  been  this  very  negation  in  the  past  of  the  duty 
of  forethought  and  the  value  of  deliberate  preparation 
that  has  brought  about  our  difficulties.  We  have  trusted 
to  individual  enterprise  and  self-interest  as  the  only 
principles  of  action  ;  let  us  at  least  acknowledge  their 
failure  and  resolve  to  take  thought  for  the  future. 


CHAPTER  VII 

WHAT  ACTION  IS  PRACTICABLE 

But  apart  from  these  general  considerations,  what  is 
the  immediate  programme  that  can  be  put  forward 
with  any  hope  of  reaHzation,  a  programme  that  neither 
calls  for  too  violent  an  action  by  the  State  nor  expects 
too  immediate  a  reform  on  the  part  of  the  farmers  ? 
We  must  not  hope  for  any  rapid  change,  simply  because 
we  are  limited  by  the  numbers  and  qualifications  of  the 
men  actually  in  occupation  of  the  land ;  we  can  neither 
add  to  them  nor  replace  them  all  at  once.  To  get 
another  million  acres  of  plough  land  out  of  the  present 
race  of  farmers  will  represent  an  enormous  advance, 
as  much  as  we  may  hope  to  attain  while  we  are  prepar- 
ing for  the  more  drastic  action — the  newer  men  and 
methods  by  which  alone  can  be  realized  the  five  to  ten 
million  additional  acres  that  are  necessary  to  the  safety 
of  the  State.  We  may  give  ourselves  a  generation 
perhaps  in  which  to  work  to  this  end;  for  that  space  of 
time  at  least  we  may  expect  that  peace  will  be  ensured 
by  the  exhaustion  produced  by  this  war  and  by  the 
remembrance  of  the  suffering  it  entailed.  We  have, 
then,  to  shape  our  pohcy  immediately  to  meet  the 
dislocation  and  relieve  the  unemployment  consequent 
on  the  disbandment  of  the  armies,  and  so  prevent  the 
permanent  loss  of  men  to  the  country  by  emigration ; 

ii8 


AN  IMMEDIATE  BOUNTY  119 

then  more  gradually  to  effect  a  progressive  intensifi- 
cation in  our  general  treatment  of  the  land. 

The  immediate  situation  is  best  met  by  the  guarantee 
of  either  a  maximum  price  for  wheat  or  a  payment 
for  the  extension  of  the  arable  area  for  a  period  of  from 
five  to  ten  years.  This  will  give  the  farmers  the  con- 
fidence they  lack,  it  will  arrest  the  movement  towards 
laying  down  land  to  grass  and  will  secure  straightway 
an  increase  in  the  demand  for  labour ;  of  itself  it  should 
bring  about  the  ploughing  up  of  another  million  acres  of 
grass  land,  which  would  provide  employment  for  20,000 
to  30,000  more  men.  The  offer  of  some  form  of  assistance 
should  precede  any  other  measure  ;  it  is  necessary  to  fur- 
nish the  stimulus  required  to  make  the  farmers  set  about 
the  prompt  extension  of  their  business.  If  it  is  not  prom- 
ised even  before  the  war  ends,  if  we  wait  to  see  how  the 
situation  develops  and  to  ascertain  the  extent  of  the  un- 
employment, the  opportunity  may  well  be  lost,  for  the 
farmer  will  wait  even  longer  in  order  to  make  sure  of  his 
prospects.  Moreover,  the  farmer  can  never  begin  to 
develop  his  business  at  any  given  signal.  If  he  is  going  to 
plough  up  grass  land  and  crop  it  in  the  following  season 
he  should  begin  to  lay  his  plans  in  June  ;  then  the  old 
grass  land  that  he  can  get  broken  up  by  steam  or  motor 
in  July  or  August  will  be  fit  for  wheat,  oats  or  potatoes. 
Winter-ploughed  land  will  in  many  cases  require  a 
summer's  fallowing  before  it  can  profitably  be  put 
under  crop,  and  this  is  particularly  true  of  the  in- 
different and  weedy  old  pasture  that  is  most  in  need  of 
breaking  up.  At  the  outset  the  question  of  how  the 
State  should  deal  with  the  landowners  in  order  to 
prevent  the  assistance  given  going  simply  into  their 
pockets  as  increased  rent,  may  safely  be  left  over  until 


120       WHAT  ACTION  IS  PRACTICABLE 

it  is  seen  how  prices  are  tending  and  what  the  State  is 
getting  for  its  outlay.  The  guarantee  is  avowedly  a 
temporary  measure  to  secure  an  immediate  increase 
of  employment  and  to  give  the  farmer  confidence  to 
develop  his  business.  But  the  quid  pro  quo  upon  which 
the  State  must  insist  as  a  sufficient  return  for  the 
moment  is  a  minimum  wage  for  the  labourers  in  any 
districts  in  which  an  attempt  is  made  to  return  to  the 
low  pre-war  rate  of  payment.  Without  better  wages 
and  better  housing,  the  more  enterprising  men  will 
certainly  leave  the  country,  and  if  we  wait  for  the 
"  haggling  of  the  market  "  to  bring  wages  up  to  the 
proper  level,  we  shall  lose  the  men.  The  better  farmers 
know  already  that  wages  must  rise  or  be  maintained 
at  war  level.  Many  of  them  have  in  the  past  been  paying 
such  wages  almost  by  stealth ;  but  many  will  put  up  a 
long,  if  losing,  fight  against  them,  because  they  have 
always  before  them  the  alternative  of  resorting  to 
grass  land  without  much  personal  loss.  It  may  be 
argued  that  a  minimum  wage  will  be  construed  as  a 
standard  wage,  and  that  the  labourers  will  suffer 
thereby  in  districts  like  the  North-Eastem  Counties  of 
England  or  Scotland,  where  wages  before  the  war  were 
above  any  minimum  that  is  likely  to  be  fixed. ..  But  the 
farmers  in  those  very  districts  are  already  convinced 
of  the  necessity  of  good  wages  and  of  their  value ;  they 
will  have  to  compete  with  the  industries  for  their  men 
after  the  war  as  before.  It  is  only  necessary  to  protect 
the  labourer  in  certain  districts  where  agriculture  had 
become  practically  a  sweated  trade  because  of  the  lack 
of  other  outlets  for  men.  The  farmer  in  those  districts 
can  equally  turn  higher  wages  to  profit  if  he  is  checked 
in  the  attempt  to  utiHze  any  temporary  pressure  of 


COST  TO  THE   STATE  121 

unemployment  after  the  war  as  a  means  of  getting 
back  to  the  old  scale.  Success  in  such  an  attempt 
would  not  be  to  his  permanent  interest ;  he  would  only 
finally  drive  the  men  off  the  land  and  progress  further 
in  the  vicious  circle  of  having  to  lay  down  land  to  grass 
because  men  were  scarce.  The  mere  prospect  of  a 
minimum  wage  tribunal  for  particular  districts  might 
very  well  ensure  that  it  would  have  no  work  to  do. 
As  the  State  is  going  to  offer  its  guaranteed  price,  not 
for  the  sake  of  the  farmers  or  the  landowners  but 
in  the  interests  of  the  nation,  it  must  ensure  as  part 
of  the  bargain  that  the  long-suffering  agricultural 
labourers  obtain  their  opportunity  of  a  decent  living. 
If  it  secures  better  wages  for  the  labourers  the  State  will 
have  got  some  return  for  its  guarantee,  and  the  question 
of  rents  and  tenure  can  well  stand  over  until  it  is  seen 
how  the  situation  is  developing. 

What  would  such  a  policy  cost  and  what  would  the 
State  obtain  in  return  ?  Let  us  assume  that  after  a 
time  the  arable  land  was  increased  by  six  million  acres, 
and  that  the  State  had  guaranteed  a  bonus  of  ten  shil- 
lings an  acre  on  all  this  increased  arable  land,  then  the 
annual  expenditure  of  the  State  would  amount  to 
£^  millions  a  year.  On  the  increased  acreage  of 
arable  land  the  whole  of  the  wheat  required  by  the 
country  could  be  grown  ;  e.g.,  a  declaration  of  war 
in  August,  the  usual  date,  could  be  followed  by  the 
sowing  of  seven  million  acres  of  wheat  for  which  there 
would  be  land  ready.  Meantime  there  would  be  that 
year's  harvest  in  hand  for  the  immediate  needs  of  the 
country,  and  if  only  one  quarter  of  the  increased  arable 
acreage  had  been  sown  with  wheat  in  the  previous  year, 
the  coimtry's  stock  to  meet  the  first  shock  of  war  would 
I 


122       WHAT  ACTION   IS  PRACTICABLE 

amount  to  40  per  cent,  of  the  whole  requirements  before 
the  new  crop  was  ready.  We  are  assuming  that  under 
peace  conditions  the  new  arable  land  would  be  used  in 
the  ordinary  way  for  general  crops,  meat  and  milk  rather 
than  specially  for  wheat,  its  normal  output  would 
amount  to  about  £42  millions  per  annum  against  less 
than  half  that  amount  when  under  grass.  Taking  the 
additional  output  of  food  produced  at  home  instead 
of  imported  at  a  value  of  £25  millions,  then  on  the  basis 
of  what  has  already  occurred  (p.  6) — that  in  the  first 
year  of  war  the  cost  of  imported  food  is  increased  by 
50  per  cent.,  we  should  be  producing  at  home  what 
would  cost  the  country  £37^  millions  in  war  time,  a 
saving  of  ;£i2|  millions.  In  each  year  of  war  there 
would  therefore  be  saved  the  nation's  expenditure  on 
the  bounty  for  four  years,  and  this  saving  would  come 
at  the  time  when  it  was  most  needed  to  preserve  the 
nation's  credit.  Considering  this,  and  considering  also 
the  saving  effected  by  the  reduced  pressure  on  freights, 
it  is  not  too  much  to  expect  that  the  saving  during  a 
year's  war  would  be  equivalent  to  six  years'  peace 
expenditure.  It  may  be  questioned,  moreover, 
whether  the  annual  expenditure  of  three  millions  is 
not  largely  made  up  to  the  State  in  other  ways.  It 
would  call  into  existence  an  extra  £25  millions  worth  of 
food,  say  £20  millions  after  deductions  for  manure, 
machinery,  etc.,  have  been  made,  all  sheer  gain,  because 
agriculture  is  the  most  purely  creative  industry  that 
exists.  It  would  further  provide  employment  for  at 
least  150,000  men,  who  ex  hypothesi  would  not  be 
withdrawn  from  some  other  foim  of  labour  like  manu- 
facturing, but  would  form  an  addition  to  and  a  support 
for  the  manufacturing  population,  because  the  United 


LAND  RECLAMATION  123 

Kingdom  is  still  a  country  with  a  surplus  population 
that  finds  its  outlet  in  emigration.  In  one  way  or  other, 
after  all  the  exchanges  have  been  effected,  it  may  be 
expected  that  a  proportion  of  the  ;f2o  millions  of 
created  wealth  would  find  its  way  back  to  the  State 
in  the  form  of  taxation,  and  so  go  indirectly  to  reduce 
its  expenditure  on  the  scheme.  If  instead  of  six  we 
postulate  an  extra  ten  million  acres  of  arable  land, 
the  annual  expenditure  would  rise  to  £^  millions ;  but 
we  should  have  gone  a  long  way  towards  assuring  the 
independence  of  imports  of  food  in  time  of  war,  and  who 
will  say  that  such  security  had  been  dearly  bought  at  a 
cost  equal  to  that  which  is  annually  expended  on  the 
construction  and  maintenance  of  two  battleships  I 

The  other  immediate  step  that  should  be  taken,  and 
again  preparations  should  begin  before  the  war  ends, 
is  to  have  in  hand  schemes  for  the  reclamation  of  all 
the  waste  land  in  the  country  that  offers  any  prospect 
of  profitable  development.  The  schemes  will  naturally 
vary  in  their  commercial  aspects ;  those  that  are 
reasonably  certain  of  success  would  be  taken  first, 
leaving  those  on  which  the  immediate  return  is  more 
doubtful  to  be  started  only  if  the  pressure  of  unem- 
ployment becomes  so  great  that  something  in  the 
nature  of  relief  work  must  be  provided.  At  its  worst 
such  work  is  creative  and  does  result  in  some  con- 
tinuous revenue  for  the  State — in  increased  employment 
and  increased  production  of  food  with  all  the  industries 
that  follow  in  its  train,  so  that  the  criterion  of  profitable 
development  can  be  very  liberally  interpreted.  The 
great  value  of  reclamation  work  lies  in  the  large  num- 
bers of  the  men,  over  and  above  the  men  to  be  per- 
manently settled  on  the  land  won,  who  can  be  employed 
la 


124       WHAT  ACTION  IS  PRACTICABLE 

for  a  year  or  more  while  the  reclamation  process  is 
going  on  and  until  the  industries  have  time  to  readjust 
themselves  to  the  new  conditions.  The  necessary 
preliminary  to  serious  work  in  the  way  of  reclamation 
is  to  give  the  State  power  to  take  over  whatever  areas 
of  waste  and  undeveloped  land  it  needs,  by  some  process 
more  rapid  and  more  equitable  than  the  cumbrous 
machinery  of  the  ordinary  compulsory  purchase  clause, 
which  puts  the  State  at  the  mercy  of  a  court  of  arbi- 
trators who  have  been  brought  up  to  regard  the  mono- 
poly value  of  land  as  sacred  and  the  need  of  the  pubHc 
for  the  land  as  the  chief  factor  in  making  up  its  price. 
For  this  purpose  the  State  should  have  the  same 
immediate  powers  as  it  possesses  under  the  Defence 
of  the  Realm  Act,  and  the  basis  of  compensation  to  the 
interests  concerned  must  be  the  loss  they  suffer  by 
being  deprived  of  the  land,  not  their  prospective  gain 
whenever  some  better  use  can  be  found  for  it. 

In  these  two  ways  we  may  hope  to  deal  with  the  urgent 
problem  of  unemployment  after  the  war ;  for  the  future 
development  of  the  land  we  must  begin  with  a  policy  of 
free  experiment.  A  few  people  who  have  studied  the 
question  may  be  convinced  of  the  economy  of  the  large 
industrial  farm  and  of  the  opportunity  it  affords  for 
the  heightened  utilization  of  the  land  and  for  improving 
the  conditions  of  employment,  but  the  case  for  this 
method  of  working  cannot  be  regarded  as  demonstrated 
at  large.  This  statement  is  equally  true  of  the  small- 
holding colony  worked  on  co-operative  lines;  their 
practicability  has  still  to  be  proved.  Let  the  State, 
then,  set  on  foot  a  limited  number  of  each  of  these 
ventures  on  different  classes  of  land  and  in  different 
parts  of  the  country ;  in  a  few  years  it  will  be  possible 


STATE  FARMS  125 

to  estimate  their  chances  of  success  or  failure  and  their 
relative  value  as  a  means  of  bringing  the  land  into  a 
higher  pitch  of  cultivation  and  of  providing  a  career 
for  the  cultivators,  whether  as  masters  or  men.  More- 
over, these  ventures,  if  they  do  nothing  else,  will  pro- 
vide some  definite  concrete  information  as  to  costs  of 
production  on  land  of  different  types  and  the  returns 
that  labour,  management  and  capital  respectively 
may  expect.  Who  can  say  on  how  much  land  in  the 
country  wheat  will  pay  at  30s.,  35s.  and  40s.  respec- 
tively ?  At  present  figures  are  so  scarce,  so  conditioned 
by  the  personality  of  the  farmer,  that  our  arguments 
are  unsubstantial,  our  basis  for  State  action  too  specu- 
lative. We  are  faced  by  the  broad  fact  that  the  present 
occupiers  of  the  land  of  the  country  consider  that  only 
42  per  cent,  of  the  cultivated  land  of  England  and  Wales 
is  fit  for  arable  cultivation.  The  statesman  who  regards 
such  a  result  of  leaving  matters  to  private  enterprise 
as  a  danger  to  the  Nation  must  have  more  facts  before 
he  or  his  representatives  are  in  a  position  to  say  to 
any  individual :  "  Your  way  of  dealing  with  the  land 
is  mistaken ;  you  can  make  it  yield  so  much  more  with 
due  profit  to  yourself ;  if  you  do  not  make  a  move  in 
that  direction  we  must  in  the  general  interests  of  the 
nation  remove  you  from  the  land."  No  one  wants  to  use 
compulsion  now  or  to  threaten  the  existing  occupiers  of 
land,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  State  is  not  at 
present  in  a  position  to  replace  them  with  anyone  better. 
But  the  implied  threat  must  be  there  if  the  farmers  do 
not  respond  to  the  assistance  and  the  opportunity 
accorded  to  them.  The  State  must  have  the  arable 
land  and  will  prepare  to  obtain  it  in  its  own  way. 
Procedure  of  this  kind  under  the  stress  of  anything 


126       WHAT  ACTION  IS  PRACTICABLE 

less  than  actual  war  can  be  denounced  as  confiscation 
and  tyranny ;  but  we  are  proposing  to  prepare  against 
war,  and  in  any  case  we  can  be  very  sure  that  in  the 
actual  working  matters  would  be  made  easy  for  an 
existing  occupier,  and  that  his  weaknesses  will  be  very 
tenderly  handled  by  any  tribunal  sitting  in  judgment 
upon  him.  The  conception  that  a  man  owes  respon- 
sibility to  the  community  for  the  way  he  conducts 
his  business  is  too  novel  to  override  with  any  haste 
the  accepted  opinion  that  he  may  do  what  he  Hkes 
with  his  own. 

Meantime,  in  the  light  of  the  figures  provided  by 
these  experiments  and  the  trend  of  agriculture  under 
the  suggested  bounty  on  production,  the  statesman  can 
begin  to  frame  his  permanent  policy  for  agricultural 
development  and  the  national  defence  thereby.  He 
will  be  able  to  estimate  how  much  land  in  the  country 
can  be  put  under  the  plough,  what  proportion  of  the 
nation's  food  can  be  looked  for  at  home,  what  the  cost 
of  pursuing  the  policy  up  to  a  given  point  is  like  to  be. 
He  will  have  time  to  form  a  reasoned  judgment  on  the 
big  questions  of  the  ownership  and  tenure  of  the  land, 
whether  the  State  must  resume  the  ownership  as  an 
offset  against  its  bounties  or  as  essential  to  its  control, 
whether  compulsion  is  necessary  to  enforce  the  desired 
standard  of  farming  and  employment,  and  what  form 
the  tribunal  shall  take  that  has  to  decide  whether  an 
occupier  is  farming  properly  or  whether  he  should  be 
dispossessed.  These  are  or  will  become  urgent  ques- 
tions, but  they  are  not  to  be  attacked  hastily  and  more 
data  are  desirable  before  decisions  are  taken. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

The  argument  set  out  in  these  pages  may  now  be 
briefly  summarized : 

1.  In  the  interests  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  it  is 
necessary  to  grow  at  home  a  larger  proportion  of  the 
food  we  consume :  (a)  as  a  national  insurance  in  time  of 
war  ;  (b)  to  develop  our  internal  resources  and  reduce 
our  foreign  indebtedness,  a  matter  which  becomes  of 
greatest  moment  in  war  time ;  (c)  to  increase  the 
agricultural  population  as  a  specially  valuable  element 
in  the  community. 

2.  These  objects  can  only  be  attained  if  more  land 
is  put  under  the  plough.  Land  under  arable  cultiva- 
tion produces  nearly  three  times  as  much  food  as  when 
under  grass,  and  employs  ten  times  as  many  men. 

3.  Some  action  by  the  State  is  necessary  in  order  to 
secure  any  considerable  ploughing  up  of  grass.  The 
farmers  are  distrustful  of  the  future  both  as  regards  the 
prices  of  produce  and  the  cost  of  labour.  Even  in  the 
years  immediately  preceding  the  war,  when  prices  were 
high  enough  to  make  arable  farming  really  profitable, 
they  preferred  the  safer  if  smaller  returns  on  grazing 
and  were  still  laying  down  land  to  grass.  This  process 
is  likely  to  continue  after  the  war  while  uncertainty 
prevails  as  to  the  course  of  prices  and  of  wages, 

127 


128  SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

4.  Five  methods  are  outlined  for  obtaining  a  more 
intensive  cultivation  of  the  soil  and  providing  employ- 
ment upon  the  land.  ^ These  are  the  establishment  of 
large  industriahzed  farms  working  on  a  considerable 
area  with  all  the  economic  advantages  of  organization 
and  scientific  management;  the  establishment  of  colonies 
of  small  holders  linked  together  by  a  co-operative 
organization,  the  intensification  of  the  methods  of 
existing  occupiers,  the  reclamation  and  settlement  of 
waste  and  undeveloped  areas,' the  establishment  of 
certain  subsidiary  agricultural  industries. 

5.  If  the  arable  land  was  increased  to  the  area  it 
occupied  in  1872,  by  about  4  milhon  acres,  and  chiefly 
devoted  to  wheat,  the  amount  of  wheat  grown  in  the 
country  would  be  raised  to  about  59  per  cent,  of  our 
total  requirements,  and  at  the  same  time  our  production 
of  cattle  food  would  be  increased  rather  than  diminished. 
As  British  Possessions  already  send  us  wheat  to  the 
extent  of  over  30  per  cent,  of  our  requirements,  all  the 
wheat  we  require  to  within  10  per  cent,  would  be  pro- 
duced within  the  Empire.  This  extension  of  arable  land 
is  still  below  the  limit  of  what  is  possible ;  moreover,  a 
further  increase  of  production  is  easily  possible  by  the 
intensification  of  our  existing  methods  of  cultivation 
and  manuring. 

6.  The  commercial  success  of  any  scheme  for  the 
extension  of  the  arable  area  must  ultimately  depend 
upon  the  prices  that  rule  for  agricultural  produce,  i.e., 
upon  the  intensity  of  foreign  competition.  If  the  State 
decides  that  such  an  increase  is  necessary  in  the  interests 
of  the  national  security,  it  may  be  driven  to  adopt  some 
system  of  bounties  or  protective  duties  in  order  to  keep 
the  returns  to  the  farmer  up  to  such  a  level  as  will  allow 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  129 

of  agricultural  development.  This  raises  the  difficulty 
that  the  benefits  conferred  by  the  State  would  in  time 
be  passed  on  to  the  landowners  in  the  form  of  increased 
rent.  The  only  final  solution  of  this  difficulty  is  for  the 
State  to  become  the  ultimate  landowner. 

7.  The  problems  of  finding  employment  and  attract- 
ing men  to  the  land  that  will  press  at  the  close  of  the 
war  can  be  met,  in  the  first  place,  by  giving  a  bounty 
on  arable  farming  by  guaranteeing  either  a  minimum 
price  for  wheat  or  an  annual  payment  for  each  addi- 
tional acre  put  under  the  plough.  This  will  give  farmers 
confidence  and  secure  an  immediate  extension  of  the 
arable  area  with  a  corresponding  increase  of  employ- 
ment. As  a  quid  pro  quo  the  State  should  fix  a  minimum 
wage  for  labourers.  Preparations  should  also  be  made 
at  once  for  a  programme  of  reclamation  of  waste  land, 
which  would  find  employment  for  large  numbers  of 
men  temporarily  and  for  a  proportion  of  them  per- 
manently. 

7.  A  limited  number  of  large  industrial  farms  and  of 
co-operative  colonies  of  small  holders  should  be  estab- 
lished in  order  to  test  their  relative  values  for  dealing 
with  the  land  intensively  and  to  provide  trustworthy 
data  on  which  the  future  land  policy  of  the  country 
could  be  framed. 

I  may  finally  be  allowed  to  urge  that  these  proposals 
are  not  put  forward  in  the  interests  of  the  agricultural 
classes  as  such,  nor  in  those  of  any  particular  party 
within  the  nation.  It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  push 
the  claims  of  an  agrarian  party  pursuing  its  own  ends 
under  the  cloak  of  the  national  welfare.  I  doubt  if  such 
a  party  has  ever  existed  in  this  country,  however  much 
individuals  may  have  been  clamorous  for  the  protection 


130  SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

of  their  own  interests  and  have  deceived  themselves 
into  thinking  that  their  own  well-being  was  identical 
with  the  general  good.  But  the  countryman  has  always 
had  a  case  when  he  has  fought  against  the  neglect  of 
agriculture  during  the  last  sixty  years  or  so,  and  his 
main  thesis  has  been  true  that  a  country  is  weakened  by 
allowing  its  rural  population  to  decay  and  by  becoming 
parasitic  upon  other  countries  for  food.  The  extent  and 
dangers  of  this  weakening  is  only  now  being  revealed 
to  us  by  war.  Nevertheless,  there  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  reforms  I  have  suggested  would  be 
desired  by  or  would  be  even  particularly  acceptable  to 
the  agricultural  com.munity — ^^to  the  existing  farmers  and 
landowners,  at  any  rate.  There  are  other  reforms  they 
would  ask  in  preference,  other  changes  more  to  their 
personal  interest.  Indeed  on  the  whole  the  present- 
day  farmer  would  rather  be  let  alone ;  he  is  making 
a  living  and  is  often  doing  very  well  as  things  are  ; 
the  best  he  would  ask  of  Government  is  not  to  inter- 
fere with  him  nor  disturb  the  conditions  to  which 
he  has  adjusted  his  business.  Nevertheless,  if  land- 
owners and  farmers  see  that  the  State  is  in  earnest  to 
effect  a  reform  in  agriculture,  if  the  nation  is  ready  to 
make  some  sacrifice  in  order  to  develop  the  resources 
of  the  land  and  to  make  it  play  its  part  in  national 
economy  and  national  safety,  they  may  be  counted 
upon  to  respond.  The  war  has  at  least  heightened  the 
sense  of  national  service  ;  we  all  know  that  a  great 
effort  at  reconstruction  is  before  us,  and  the  agricul- 
tural portion  of  the  community,  no  less  than  any  other, 
is  prepared  to  subordinate  its  immediate  interests  if  it 
is  called  upon  to  share  in  the  rebuilding  of  a  well-knit 
fabric  of  the  nation. 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  131 

I  have  no  party  nor  separate  interest  to  promote,  but 
I  have  come  to  know  the  face  of  my  own  country  as  few 
men  have  been  privileged  to  do.  It  is  out  of  my  love  for 
its  well-laboured  soil,  my  hatred  for  the  neglect  and 
waste  that  deface  it,  and  my  faith  in  the  vitality  of  the 
people  who  live  by  it,  that  these  proposals  spring. 


132 


APPENDICES 


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APPENDICES 


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APPENDICES 


135 


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n  w  ^  o  n  a 


GARDEN  CITY  PRESS  LIMITED,  PRINTERS.  LETCHWORTH,  ENGLAND. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


NOV  28  1947 


LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


VB  19360 


S.'TTnnr. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


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